‘National disgrace’: workers taking bosses to court forced to wait until 2030

When justice secretary David Lammy announced unprecedented funding to clear the backlog in the criminal court system in February, he said his thoughts were with the “victims who are being left to wait three, four or five years for their day in court”.

Yet at the same time, resources were being cut from another part of the justice system where people are being kept waiting just as long. We have discovered that in Great Britain’s desperately under-resourced system of employment tribunals, the backlog is such that some hearings are already being scheduled for 2030.

And as Lammy removed all financial constraints for crown courts, he cut down the time being afforded to tribunal hearings.

According to meeting minutes we have seen, tribunals will be funded to sit for 34,590 days this year – 1,000 fewer than two years ago. The cut would have been three times as big were it not for last-minute funding from the Department of Business and Trade.

These cutbacks are set against a record-breaking backlog that reached more than 65,000 at the end of last year. That number is still rising. Changes in the new Employment Rights Act will mean nearly 7,000 more cases coming into the system every year, according to government estimates, on top of the tens of thousands already brought annually.

Olivia Vicol, chief executive of legal advice charity Work Rights Centre (WRC) said the backlogs are a “national disgrace” and the tribunal system is in “freefall”. She described Lammy’s reductions under these circumstances as “astonishing”.

New research by the charity seen exclusively by TBIJ reveals how a perfect storm of fewer judges, too little money and more cases is preventing workers from getting justice. “I’ve come across multiple people who have given up and withdrawn their claim,” one solicitor told WRC. “They can’t take it any more. And it’s affecting people’s mental health.”

Meanwhile, lawyers cannot even reach tribunals over the phone due to understaffing and at times don’t even hear back when they ask for corrections on judgments.

“Cases [are] coming in faster than they can be resolved,” said Mark Evans, president of the Law Society of England and Wales. “The UK government needs to provide adequate funding for tribunals, judges and legal professionals to serve our communities.”

Lord John Hendy KC, a leading employment law barrister and Labour peer, compared the current situation to the fees introduced in 2013 for people wanting to file a claim, which were since ruled unlawful and abolished. These delays are “just as much a denial of access to justice”, he said.

“Rights without remedies are worthless.”

Strongarm tactics

For a worker who has gone out on a limb by taking their boss to court, the impact of chronic delays can be overwhelming. Some give up. Others more readily take an out-of-court settlement.

“I’ve got clients who I worry about, some who suffer from severe depression and have attempted suicide in the past. They accept a settlement, even if it’s a lot less than what they would hope to get from a tribunal,” a solicitor told WRC.

And the longer a case drags on, the more difficult the logistics often become. One recent case involving the clothes shop Moss Bros, for instance, was delayed by so long that various witnesses had gone on to leave the company. Eventually the judge decided that a fair trial was impossible and struck it out.

Litigants in person – people representing themselves in court, often without legal advice – are especially vulnerable to the scare tactics used by some companies during long delays.

“[Employers] try to strong-arm them into withdrawing or frightening them off with costs threats, deposit order threats, strikeout threats,” one lawyer said to WRC. “It puts [litigants in person] into a state of anxiety.”

This happened to Julie*, 66. She filed her claim two years ago against an NHS trust and still doesn’t know when the final hearing will be held.

So far, she has faced a cancelled preliminary hearing, applications to have the case struck out and demands by the trust’s lawyers that she pay a “deposit” if she wants to proceed. The trust has refused all offers for judge-assisted mediation, a process which would resolve the case in a much faster timeline.

Julie said she was forced to quit as a mental health nurse with the NHS – a job she’s held since the late 1970s – after she reported bullying on behalf of other staff members. Immediately after she raised these concerns, she said, she was herself bullied by management, put through a disciplinary procedure and eventually reported to the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC). The regulator cleared her of any wrongdoing – but the experience effectively ended her career.

“I’ve got to fight it and I will, but I don’t really want to,” she said. “It feels like I’m wasting my retirement and it is making me sick,” she said.

In the past two years there have been times when she couldn’t sleep or eat. She says she had dedicated her whole life to talking and listening to people, but the lies she was subjected to turned her into someone who has a deep mistrust of others.

And without any legal advice, she has had to prepare her case by herself. The case bundle is now over 1,000 pages.

Working on her claim gives her symptoms akin to post-traumatic stress, she says. “It brings it all up again […] something you want to get rid of but you can’t.”

She said there are days when she just wants to get it out of her head and “burn it all”.

‘A privilege of the past’

While the last year has seen a rise in the number of tribunal cases being brought, it is still fewer than during the 2008 financial crisis or the Covid-19 pandemic.

The difference now is an increase in complex cases that require more judicial time and resources. This is in part driven by the abolition of legal aid for most kinds of claims and the rise in the use of AI by claimants who don’t have access to legal advice, according to WRC.

“It creates reams and reams of things to read,” one solicitor told the charity. “It’s very hard for someone who doesn’t have legal training to discern what’s fluff and what’s legally important.”

There has also been difficulty in recruiting judges. WRC found that since 2022, the number of employment tribunal judges in England and Wales has fallen by nearly a fifth, to 308. The president of the employment tribunals for England and Wales recently said that last year they tried to recruit 36 full-time equivalent judges but hired just over 25.

This appears to be linked to the case backlog in different parts of the country. Scotland and Wales have relatively short wait times, while many of the longest delays were concentrated in London, where recruitment problems are most acute. The president believes people are put off applying for jobs in London because of the capital’s cost of living.

London South, which is based in Croydon, is the tribunal with the longest delays in the UK. It hoped to recruit 11 full-time equivalent judges in 2025 but hired less than half that. A relatively simple three-day case filed at the end of last year was recently set for January 2030, we were told.

A Ministry of Justice spokesperson told us that the department recognised the pressures on the system and has “put in place a series of measures to bring down the backlog by maximising sitting days and recruiting even more employment judges to ensure swifter justice”.

They also said that the number of funded sitting days this year is higher than the number actually sat in previous years. (This is true, although the number of days sat every year is generally some way below the full allocation, which is given as an absolute maximum.)

The spokesperson added that the ministry was putting in place efficiency measures such as virtual hearings where appropriate and investment in new digital systems.

WRC also found that administrative staff were under increased pressure, with each staff member now handling nearly twice as many cases as they had in 2022.

The knock-on effects are clear: lawyers said they months to hear back on applications and some clients were not even notified of the date of their hearing. One said that they spent two years trying to get a judgement corrected and in the end gave up.

Often hearings are cancelled at the last minute, or even after they’re scheduled to start – because there’s no judge available, for instance. But the lawyers have already allocated their time and will charge for it, leaving claimants having to pay twice for legal representation.

WRC says there are a number of ways to ease the burden in the system, such as giving the new employment rights regulator, the Fair Work Agency, the power to investigate wages claims, and creating better case management systems.

But like with the criminal justice system, tribunals simply need more money.

“Without an immediate injection of funding for judges, legal advice and a focus on early intervention,” said Vicol, “access to justice will become a privilege of the past.”

* Name has been changed