Employment Law Watch : Employment & Labor Lawyer & Attorney : Reed Smith Law Firm

Regulations to amend the 2004 Employment Tribunal Rules of Procedure have been laid before Parliament and will come into effect on 6^th April 2009. These changes will be relevant to all practitioners and HR managers involved in Tribunal proceedings – take note in particular of the changes regarding making a request to extend time for filing a Response.   

The Employment Tribunals (Constitution and Rules of Procedure) (Amendment) Regulations 2008

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The Deputy Information Commissioner has recently ordered the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR) to disclose names and addresses of the respondents to all Employment Tribunal claims lodged since October 2004. The Information Commissioner considers that, on balance, the public interest was best served by disclosing the information. This effect of this order is that anyone can now make a similar application under the Freedom of Information Act and have access to all respondents’ names and addresses in Tribunal proceedings. Whether in the “information age”, this will have any adverse impact on businesses, as was argued by BERR, remains to be seen. 

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The Scottish Court of Session in the case of Cannop & Others –v- The Highland Council has confirmed that where the employee’s Employment Tribunal claim follows on from a grievance previously communicated, there does need to be a necessary relationship between the grievance and the complaint pleaded in the ET1 Tribunal claim form, so that the grievance underlying the ET1 is essentially the same as the grievance earlier communicated. In respect equal pay claims, the Court declined to comment on the Employment Appeal Tribunal’s decision that the relevant grievance must refer to the comparators which are subsequently cited in the ET1.

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On 2 May 2008, ACAS published a new draft Code of practice on discipline and grievances for public consultation. The Code has been revised to take into account the changes proposed to be made to workplace dispute resolution by the Employment Bill, currently before Parliament, and in particular the forthcoming abolition of the statutory dispute resolution procedures.

Consultation Paper and draft Code of Practice

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