Acas annual report shows surge in tribunal claims
Acas has published its annual report for 2007-08. The figures show a jump in the number of tribunal claims received by Acas for conciliation, with the number of claims by main ground of complaint rising from 105,177 last year to 151,249 this year. Including all grounds of complaint, the total number of claims received by Acas rose from 180,420 last year to 227,782 this year, a rise of 26 per cent.
The jump can be attributed to a substantial increase in the number of equal pay complaints. Over the period from 1 April 2007 to 31 March 2008 the number of equal pay claims received for conciliation by Acas totalled 58,513. This is an increase of 112% over the figure of 27,497 for 2006/07 and an increase of 413% on the figure of 14,147 for 2005/06.
Equal pay is now the largest category of claim, representing 35.7% of the total. This made equal pay the most cited ground of complaint. Unfair dismissal, which is usually the most popular ground of claim, was second with 43,231 total complaints.
In addition to the increase in equal pay claims, the number of working time claims nearly doubled, rising from 14,960 in 2006/07 to 28,767 in 2007/08 coming in as the third most lodged claim in the year, although this still does not reach the peak of 34,365 such claims received in 2005/06.
The Tribunal Service has also published its annual report for 2007-08, but this only shows the total number of ET applications received for all grounds of complaint – 189,300, which was 42% higher than expected due to the number of multiple claims. To date a breakdown of the type of claims has yet to be provided. It is also noticeable that for the second year running the Acas figures differ from the Tribunal Service figures.
The Acas report can be viewed at:
http://www.acas.org.uk/CHttpHandler.ashx?id=919&p=0
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