Workplace Report April 2011

Law - Tribunal procedures

Tribunal procedures — the key developments

• Refusal to accept a reasonable settlement offer can result in liability to pay costs (case 2).

• If a tribunal materially breaches the rules requiring it to give proper reasons for its decision, this is likely to provide good grounds for an appeal (case 3).

• Where a claimant accepts advice from a skilled adviser who makes a mistake that results in the claimant missing the deadline for bringing a tribunal claim, the tribunal is very unlikely to extend time to bring the claim, even though the mistake was the fault of the adviser rather than the claimant (case 4 and case 5).

The full judgments of the cases reported here can be found free of charge at www.bailii.org

The relevant legislation is available to view at www.legislation.gov.uk