Employment Tribunal and Industrial Tribunal Defence for Employers

A claim has arrived. The clock started before you read it.

A tribunal claim is not simply a legal problem. It is management time you will never recover, internal emails you would rather nobody read aloud, and a financial exposure that has just changed shape. How you respond in the first fortnight shapes everything that follows.

We defend employers throughout England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and we will tell you quickly — without hedging — whether this claim should be fought or resolved.

Speak to a tribunal solicitor today →

0121 256 8043 · 07886 878 751

What happens the moment you instruct us

We assess the claim on merits and on money. We identify and diarise your response deadline. We tell you what to preserve and what to stop deleting. We check whether your legal expenses insurer needs notifying. And we give you a realistic figure for fighting it and a realistic figure for settling it, because you cannot make a commercial decision without both.

Stage by stage

Conciliation. Before a claim can be lodged, the claimant must notify Acas in Great Britain, or the Labour Relations Agency in Northern Ireland. This window is an opportunity, not a formality. Many claims are worth closing here, confidentially, before positions harden.

The response. In Great Britain you respond on an ET3. In Northern Ireland, a prescribed response must normally reach the Office of the Industrial Tribunals and Fair Employment Tribunal within 28 days of the date the claim was sent to you. Your response is the foundation of the whole defence — thin grounds of resistance are a wound that never heals. We draft them properly, including limitation and jurisdictional points most employers miss.

Evidence and case management. Disclosure strategy, witness selection and statements, hearing bundles, preliminary hearings, case management orders, and strike-out or deposit applications where genuinely arguable.

Hearing and resolution. Final hearing representation, counter-schedules of loss, and negotiation right up to the tribunal door where that is the commercially right answer.

Claims we defend

Unfair and constructive dismissal · automatically unfair dismissal · discrimination, harassment and victimisation · whistleblowing detriment and dismissal · unlawful deductions from wages · holiday pay · redundancy and consultation · TUPE · breach of contract · flexible working · fixed-term and part-time worker claims · multiple claimant proceedings.

Northern Ireland: a different tribunal, a different rulebook

NI claims are heard by the Industrial Tribunal, or by the Fair Employment Tribunal where the complaint concerns religious belief or political opinion under FETO 1998 — a protection with no Great Britain equivalent.

Conciliation runs through the Labour Relations Agency, notification is mandatory, and the tribunal deadline is paused for up to one calendar month while conciliation is explored.

Appeals go directly to the Court of Appeal in Northern Ireland rather than through the EAT.

The qualifying period for ordinary unfair dismissal in NI remains one year under the Employment Rights (NI) Order 1996, against two years in Great Britain.

If you employ people on both sides of the Irish Sea, you are running two different risk profiles.

Full representation or fixed stages

Instruct us for the whole defence, or for defined stages — the response, the witness statements, the hearing — at a price agreed in advance.