This spring the management committee of the Employment Lawyers Association (ELA) decided to conduct a survey of its 5,500 members across England, Wales and Scotland to gain a clear understanding of their experience as representatives in employment tribunals.

The exercise involved canvassing opinion on suggestions for reform, with the aim of improving efficiency and saving time and cost for all users of the employment tribunals (including the employees and employers our members represent).

Our survey struck a nerve with our members. Some 20% responded, which, when taking into account individual responses and those who responded on behalf of their firms, was a significant proportion for such a survey. Most respondents were solicitors in private practice (81%).

The ELA survey results coincided with the Tribunals Service announcing in July that, from April 2009 to March 2010, there was a staggering 56% rise in the number of claims being accepted by employment tribunals.

The ELA survey revealed substantial dissatisfaction with the current performance of the employment tribunal system – hardly surprising perhaps, given the huge rise in the number of claims issued against the backcloth of recession.

Some 31% of ELA members indicated that they were dissatisfied and 4% very dissatisfied with the service the employment tribunals provide. Only 33% indicated they were ‘satisfied’, in contrast to the 71% quoted in the recent Annual Statistics for Tribunals as a whole for 2009-10. And 56% of ELA members had experienced a decline in service, with the majority pointing to inadequate resourcing as the main cause.

One key theme to emerge was concern about the lack of consistency around the country, with 83% indicating members believed employment tribunals do not adopt a consistent approach to practice and procedure. Some 75% indicated they believed employment judges were not being consistent in their judicial approach to handling cases. A very high proportion (over 93%) believed users would benefit from greater consistency.

A number of suggestions were made to achieve greater consistency including the introduction of standard directions.

Several problem areas in practice were raised, including: short notice postponements of substantive hearings; delays in listing procedural hearings; and cases going ‘part heard’ because of lack of judicial time. Only half were satisfied with the employment tribunals’ approach to costs applications and 68% said something needs to be done to deal more effectively with vexatious litigants.

Several procedural reform proposals attracted widespread support, such as improved case tracking, more correspondence by email, use of standard agendas for case management discussions and holding discussions by telephone. A large proportion (79%) wanted large-scale equal pay claims to be handled by a single employment tribunal office. Many respondents also favoured judges sitting alone on cases such as unfair dismissals, to ease pressure on the system.

ELA members were also surveyed on more radical suggestions taken from practices of other courts in the UK and around the world, including listing main hearings from Monday to Thursday, and reserving Fridays for procedural hearings, which attracted 60% support. In contrast, only 26% either strongly or fully supported ‘out of hours’ hearings with 32% completely opposed to the idea.

One factor which increases the length of hearings is the reading out by witnesses of all or part of their witness statements. Somewhat surprisingly, only 27% of survey respondents fully supported taking witness statements as read, with 42% being strongly opposed to imposing a time limit on a witness for reading all or part of their statement.

ELA hopes the large number of positive suggestions made for reform will be considered fully by those with the unenviable task of running employment tribunals in these difficult times.

Joanne Owers is chair of the Employment Lawyers Association and chair of the ELA Working Party on Employment Tribunals