Appealing to the Employment Appeal Tribunal 




Appeals are from the employment tribunal to the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT). 




Only questions of law can be appealed, not questions of fact. The only exception is where a tribunal’s ruling is “perverse”, in other words, so obviously wrong that no reasonable tribunal could have reached that conclusion after hearing the same evidence. Appeals on this basis rarely succeed. 




The reason why it is so hard to challenge tribunals’ conclusions about the facts of a case is that tribunals listen to the witnesses giving their evidence and being tested. Appeal courts do not, so they are not able to assess first-hand whether someone is telling the truth. For the same reason, the parties cannot raise new evidence and new points of law on appeal that were not raised at the tribunal hearing, except in exceptional circumstances.




Appeals go to the EAT in England, Wales and Scotland (which has a separate EAT); in Northern Ireland, appeals from industrial tribunals go to the Court of Appeal. 




Any appeal must be lodged within 42 days of the tribunal sending out its decision, not the date it is received (Gdynia American Shipping Lines v Chelminski [2004] IRLR 725). This is a strict deadline. Extensions are exceptionally rare.
Great care must be taken to ensure that the appeal court rules are followed scrupulously or else the appeal may not be allowed to proceed.


The EAT can order a party to pay costs on the same basis as the tribunal below (see above). Anyone contemplating an appeal to the EAT should get legal advice as soon as possible. Just 4% of employment tribunal rulings are appealed, of which only about a quarter are successful.