The ET panel

A full ET consists of a legally qualified employment judge and two lay members, one from a panel of employer representatives and one from a panel of employee representatives with industrial experience gained in the workplace (such as experienced union reps and negotiators). Many ET claims are now heard by an employment judge sitting alone. These include all claims for unpaid wages, holiday, redundancy payments, interim relief and unfair dismissal and appeals to the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT). An employment judge can order that a claim be heard by a full panel, but this is increasingly rare. The loss of experienced lay members, especially in unfair dismissal claims, is generally viewed as a retrograde step, moving ever further away from the tribunal’s originally intended role as an industrial jury. For the position during the Coronavirus pandemic, see the box on page 511.

Since October 2020, some non-employment judges have been allowed to sit as ET judges, in order to ease some of the case backlog.