Fee Transparency – Employment

Employment Tribunal claims for Wrongful Dismissal or Unfair Dismissal

Please note, these fee estimates are only for wrongful dismissal or unfair dismissal claims and should not be relied on in relation to other types of Employment Tribunal claims, such as discrimination claims, which are more complicated and involve more work

Work on Employment Tribunal claims is carried out by Ruth Brown, a senior solicitor admitted in 1994, with occasional assistance from Mr Colin Byford.

Work is charged on an hourly rate basis at £261.00 per hour plus VAT.  Each case is different so it is not possible to give a fixed total cost, but typical costs for each stage are set out below.

All our fees are exclusive of any VAT which will be added at the current rate, which is presently 20%.

1. Initial interview.  This is charged at a fixed fee of £120.00 (£144.00 plus VAT).  In this interview we will discuss the issues in your case, advise you on the tribunal process and the role of the ACAS Early Conciliation service, consider funding options and agree the next step.

2. The next step may be for us to prepare a letter to your employer or employee and a full letter of advice to you, which will typically be 1-2 hours’ work, (£261.00 – £522.00 plus VAT) or for us to take no further action while you explore resolution through the ACAS Early Conciliation scheme.

Issuing the claim

3. If the matter cannot be resolved through ACAS or negotiation, the next step for an employee or worker bringing a claim (known as the Claimant) will be for us to prepare and issue the Employment Tribunal claim. This involves completing a claim form ET1.  If we have all your information to hand this can take 30-60 minutes (£130.50 to £261.00 plus VAT) but if we have to go back to you with questions, or if the background to the case is complicated you could be looking at 1 hour 30 minutes (£391.50 plus VAT) or more.  At the moment there is no fee payable when a Tribunal claim is submitted.

4. The claim has to be issued within 3 months of the date of termination of your employment, or one month after the ACAS conciliation process finishes, whichever is later. However, due to delays in the Tribunal system at present, it can take 3-4 weeks between submitting the claim and it being sent out to your former employer.

The Employer’s response

5. The employer (known as the Respondent) has to respond within 28 days of receiving the claim form, by completing form ET3. For an employer instructing us, the time involved in completing the form ET3 will depend on what is said in the Claimant’s ET1, but we will go through the form with you to establish how much you accept and how much you dispute of what the Claimant says.  Typically this is 1-2 hours’ work (£261.00 – £522.00 plus VAT), but with a lengthy Claim Form and a lot of disputed allegations, more time than this may be needed.

6. When we act for a Claimant we would then meet with you to discuss what the Respondent has said, and we may write to the Respondent at that stage to set out how much of what they say is accepted and what is disputed. It also gives us a chance to review the value of the claim, the chances of success and to consider and make offers of settlement.  This could be between 1 and 3 hours’ work (£261.00 – £783.00 plus VAT), depending on how much there is to consider.

The directions stage

7. The Tribunal will then give directions for preparing the case for trial. These may include sending copies of all relevant documents to the other side, preparing witness statements and, for the Claimant, calculating the remedy, in other words, the amount of the claim.  The amount of work varies from one case to another, but disclosing documents and reading documents received from the other side can be between 30 minutes and 2 hours (£130.50 – £522.00 plus VAT), depending on the volume of documentation.

8. The time taken for witness statements depends on how many witnesses you have, the length of each statement and how much detail is included. The Claimant’s own witness statement will need to deal with the events around their dismissal, and the principal statement for the Respondent will need to put their case.  For this reason it is difficult to estimate time for this item of work.  The time includes interviewing the witness, reading relevant documentation, preparing a first draft of the statement, sending this to the witness and making any amendments that the witness wants to make.  Even with just one witness you are probably looking at a minimum of 2 hours’ work for this (£522.00 plus VAT), and with several witnesses, it could be 5 or 6 hours’ work in total (£1,305.00 – £1,566.00 plus VAT).

9. Calculating the remedy depends on how complex the Claimant’s pay arrangements were. If the Claimant received a regular monthly salary, this is straightforward, but if the Claimant had irregular hours, commission, bonuses or non-monetary benefits, these all have to be factored into the calculations.  The time needed for this stage also depends on how readily we can obtain the information but an estimate of between 30 minutes to 2 hours is usual for this (£130.50 – £522.00 plus VAT).

Timings

10. The total time taken to deal with the directions stage will depend on how complex the case is and what needs to be done, but even in a straightforward case the directions timetable is likely to cover a period of 2-3 months. Added to that, there are now substantial delays in the Tribunal system and it can take a few weeks for the Tribunal to set the directions timetable.  Sometimes both sides can agree to a preparation timetable without waiting for the Tribunal, but you need to be aware that if your claim is disputed, the case will not be resolved quickly.  If the case is not resolved after the directions stage it will go to a final hearing, and if a hearing is needed, the hearing date could be a few months ahead.

The hearing

11. The Tribunal has a range of options as to how it deals with cases. In very straightforward cases, or where the Respondent fails to respond to the claim, the Tribunal may be able to make a decision without the need for a hearing.   In other cases, the Tribunal will list one or more hearings.  They may decide to deal with one particular issue as a ‘preliminary issue’, for example, if there is a dispute about whether the Claimant is entitled to make a claim for Wrongful dismissal or Unfair dismissal, or it may list a hearing of the whole case.  Another option may be for the Tribunal to deal with the question of whether the Claimant was wrongfully or unfairly dismissed first and then decide on the remedy afterwards.

12. We do not do Employment Tribunal advocacy ourselves. If there is to be a hearing we will arrange for a barrister specialising in employment law to attend and represent you.  The barrister’s fee will depend on how long the hearing is and how experienced they are, but for example, for a 1 day hearing with a barrister of say 5-7 years’ experience, you could be looking at £2,000.00 – £2,500.00 plus VAT plus our costs of preparing the case for the hearing, which includes preparing bundles of case papers if you are the Claimant, sending papers to the barrister and dealing with practical arrangements such as notifying witnesses if they need to attend.  The hearing preparation work can be quite time-consuming, especially in a case with a lot of documents, so you could be looking at 5 hours work (£1,305.00 plus VAT) or more.

13. The final hearing is the most expensive part of a case, so we will look at settlement options where possible. A case can be settled at any time up to the hearing, and the costs saving of settling early is an important factor.  During the case, if you are interested in exploring settlement we will correspond with the other party and make offers, and advise you on any offers which are made by the other side.  It is difficult to say how much work could be involved in this, because settlement is not an extra item as such, but correspondence about offers could add a couple of hours’ work to the total (£522.00 plus VAT).

14. In more complex cases we may suggest that we consult a barrister during the preparation of the case, either for written advice or in a conference. In some cases we may advise instructing a barrister to prepare the form ET1 or ET3.  The first time the barrister works on the case they will have to read all of the papers but once they have done that, they may do additional items for less, but for a conference or written advice you are typically looking at £1,500.00 – £2,000.00 plus VAT and for drafting work maybe £600.00 – £1,200.00 plus VAT.

15. In the Employment Tribunal, the usual rule is that each side has to bear their own legal costs whether they win or lose the case. This means that even if you are successful at claiming compensation, you will have to pay your legal costs out of that money.  We bear this in mind throughout the case when advising you.

16. Our usual terms of business are a private client retainer, where you are liable to pay our fees regardless of the outcome of the case, but in cases of hardship where we consider you have a strong case, we may agree to act on a deferred payment basis, so that you pay us when you receive your damages, or we may be willing to do some initial work on a no win no fee basis to explore the possibility of settlement, but this is at our discretion and Mr Byford’s decision on funding is final.

January 2024