Workplace Report April 2001

Features: Law at Work

Tribunal time limits

There are time limits for all applications to tribunals. The EAT has held that, in a claim taken by an expelled union member, the time limit should be strictly applied. It ran from the date when the union made the decision to expel him, not from the date of his eventual appeal.

Mr Hamm argued that it was not "reasonably practical" for him to have claimed in time because he had been advised to wait until after his appeal. However, the EAT held that the mistaken view that the time limit ran from after the appeal, was not the same as saying that it was not "reasonably practical" for the claim to have been made in time.

(GMB v Hamm 246/00)