Employment Law News

Bad publicity guaranteed: Employment Tribunal judgments will be available online

HM Courts and Tribunals Service has confirmed that there will be an online database of Employment Tribunal judgments by the end of 2016 or the beginning of 2017.

HMCTS has stated that the database will enable people to access Employment Tribunal judgments which have been handed down since the database has been introduced.

Judgments handed down before the database has come into being will still have to be accessed in the traditional way; namely, writing to the Bury St Edmunds tribunal office and requesting a copy by post.  This method meant in practice that unless the press happened to be in attendance at a hearing (which was quite rare), it was very likely that a case could go to the tribunal and no-one would find out about it.

The new database means that any employers expecting a judgment in the New Year may find that the outcome of their case is far more public than it once would have been.