Employment tribunals: statistics published for April to June 2026

Facts 

Employment Tribunal claims are counted as received (receipts) once a tribunal has accepted a claim as valid. Claims are classed as either single or multiple claims. Single claims are brought by an individual employee, worker or applicant. Multiple claims are brought by two or more people arising out of the same facts, usually against a common employer. They are usually processed administratively and managed judicially together. Both single and multiple claims can involve one or more jurisdictional complaints, for example claims of disability discrimination and unfair dismissal. (On average, each claim includes between two and three jurisdictional complaints.)

We have compared the headline statistics from the quarterly report for Q1 2026/2027 with the equivalent statistics from Q1 2025/2026: 

• There were 14,000 single claim receipts in Q1 2026/2027 and 11,000 in Q1 2025/2026, an increase of 27%

• 6,100 single claims were disposed of in Q1 2026/2027, a decrease of 6% compared to the 6,500 that were disposed of in Q1 2025/2026

• There were 70,000 open single claims in total in Q1 2026/2027, representing a 52% increase from the 46,000 open single claims in Q1 2025/2026

• In Q1 2026/2027, the tribunals received 10,700 multiple claims, a decrease of 18% when compared with the 13,100 receipts in Q1 2025/2026. (Multiple claim receipts tend to be more volatile as they can be skewed by a high number of claims against a single employer such as holiday pay claims.) 

• Tribunals disposed of 4,000 multiple claims in Q1 2026/2027, compared to 5,700 in Q1 2025/2026, a decrease of 30%

• There were 467,000 open multiple claims in total in Q1 2026/2027, compared with 453,000 in Q1 2025/2026, an increase of 3%

• At the end of the period, there were 537,000 open claims in the system, of which 70,000 were single claims and 467,000 were multiple claims

• The tribunal's outstanding caseload increased by 38,000 (8%) compared to the same period in the previous year

Claims of unfair dismissal (5,800), unauthorised deductions from wages (3,200) and disability discrimination (4,000) were the most litigated complaints in Q1 2026/2027. 

What does this mean for insurance? 

More claimants are bringing claims while tribunals are disposing of fewer cases. The last decrease in the single open caseload was between Q2 and Q3 2024/2025, when cases were nearly half the current number. Hearings are being listed into 2029 and even 2030, and this delay makes claims harder to defend given witnesses may leave the employer before the hearing. Those who remain may struggle to give reliable evidence about events that happened years earlier. This may push more insureds towards late settlement, after defence costs have already been incurred. 

Claim volumes are likely to rise again as more of the provisions in the Employment Rights Act 2025 come into force. The limitation period for bringing most claims will increase from three months to six months from 1 October 2026. The unfair dismissal qualifying period will reduce from two years to six months’ continuous service from 1 January 2027. The cap on the unfair dismissal compensatory award will also be removed from that date, giving employees a greater incentive to litigate. Given unfair dismissal is already the most popular claim, we expect claims to increase significantly in 2027. 

We are also experiencing high volumes of documentation produced by litigants in person armed with generative AI tools, which increases the costs of handling claims. Some tribunals are responding to this excess by providing specific case management orders, and the EAT has issued guidance on the use of AI in litigation more generally. We are hoping these actions help to prevent disproportionately complex AI generated pleadings and submissions in employment claims. 

Insurers should expect employment claims to take longer to reach a final hearing. They may wish to review settlement control wording and excesses for employment-related claims. Earlier settlement authority may reduce the cost of claims that would otherwise remain in the tribunal system for a prolonged period. 

The statistics in this article were taken from the Main Tables of Tribunals statistics quarterly: April to June 2026