Employment tribunal claims and awards latest statistics

HM Courts & Tribunals Service publishes statistics which illustrate the nature of activity before the employment tribunals on a quarterly and annual basis.

In addition to quarterly statistics, annual statistics, published each autumn, are provided which cover the 12-month period from the beginning of April to the end of the following March. This checklist sets out annual statistics for number of claims brought, average awards and costs awards going back to  2014/15.

Numbers of claims brought

These figures are for the number of claims received by employment tribunals from April to March of the following year. The total claims figure for each year is the number of ET1s accepted. As many ET1s contain more than one complaint, the figures in each column add up to more than the total claims

Figures for 2021/22

On 9 June 2022, the Ministry of Justice published quarterly tribunal statistics for January to March 2022 and annual tribunal statistics for 2021/22. The report explains that employment tribunals transitioned to a new database between March and May 2021. Since then, it has not been possible to gather employment tribunal case data on a consistent basis, and therefore the annual totals for 2021/22 are not available. The jurisdictional breakdown of claims for 2021/22 is subject to further analysis but will be presented when available

2020/21 2019/20 2018/19 2017/18 2016/17 2015/16 2014/15
Total claims 117,926 103,973 121,075 109,698 88,476 83,031 61,308
Age discrimination 15,336 2,434 2,493 6,770 7,628 12,636 1,087
Breach of contract 14,836 14,974 14,239 12,186 7,934 9,279 8,250
Disability discrimination 7,430 8,178 6,919 5,477 3,794 3,470 3,106
Equal pay 8,509 24,689 27,730 35,558 10,467 17,063 9,621
National minimum wage 269 303 350 362 223 239 161
Part-time Regulations 2,766 319 301 341 374 215 304
Pregnancy detriment/ dismissal 1,435 1,636 1,810 1,357 872 865 790
Public interest disclosure (whistleblowing) 3,128 2,827 2,599 2,191 1,497 1,400 1,395
Race discrimination 4,175 3,967 3,589 2,991 2,240 2,002 1,858
Redundancy – inform & consult 7,072 7,311 5,657 4,097 2,410 4,085 2,307
Redundancy pay 6,453 6,573 5,547 4,104 2,317 3,944 2,939
Religion or belief discrimination 733 797 753 670 384 340 339
Sex discrimination 5,172 6,260 9,427 5,522 8,841 5,380 4,471
Sexual orientation discrimination 438 505 461 316 197 188 189
TUPE – inform & consult 1,035 562 799 819 811 635 568
Unauthorised deductions from wages 17,816 22,659 22,488 24,089 9,152 36,362 28,701
Unfair dismissal 23,904 21,592 21,592 17,714 12,038 13,302 12,652
Working time 20,867 26,680 49,725 16,950 30,313 36,813 31,451
Written pay statement 887 803 2,237 484 263 375 282
Written reasons for dismissal 356 354 223 257 159 210 209
Written terms and conditions 1,114 1,287 1,417 1,200 976 1,023 925
Others 43,057 20,679 18,359 29,276 41,055 28,253 18,361

Average awards

The following highest, mean and median awards were made by the tribunals.

No average award figures are available for 2020/21 or 2021/22

(*The mean award is calculated by finding the total value of all awards made over the year and dividing by the number of cases in which awards were made.)

(**The median award is that which is in the middle of all the awards if they are arranged in order of value.)

2019/2020 Highest award Mean award* Median award**
Unfair dismissal £118,842 £10,812 £6,646
Race discrimination £30,330 £9,801 £8,040
Sex discrimination £73,619 £17,420 £14,073
Disability discrimination £265,719 £27,043 £13,000
Religious discrimination £0 £0 £0
Sexual orientation discrimination £96,645 £27,936 £9,245
Age discrimination £243,636 £38,794 £11,791