Tribunals recruit new blood

A recent recruitment exercise for new lay employment tribunal members has produced mixed results, recently published statistics show.

They show a divide in the success of candidates with protected characteristics, such as those from black and ethnic minorities or those with a disability.

Between August 2009 and February 2010, the Employment Tribunal Service sought to recruit new lay wing members from both union and business backgrounds. This was in order to replenish the numbers of people able to form the industrial jury — the two lay people who assist the tribunal judge and adjudicate claims in the tribunal.

A positive finding of an analysis of the applicants’ backgrounds was that, although only 7% of applications were from people with disabilities, disabled candidates were almost twice as likely to be appointed as non-disabled candidates. And the result was 45 or 15% of disabled candidates were recommended for the job appointment.

However, only 7% of applications were from black and minority ethnic (BME) people. BME candidates were only marginally more likely to be appointed than those of white ethnic origin. Even though a high proportion of BME candidates invited for interview were recommended for appointment (60%), only 27 or 9% of BME candidates were eventually appointed.

Overall, there were close to 4,000 applicants, but just under one in 10 — 341 people — were eventually recommended for appointment.