Costs of Employment Tribunals

[marky]

Picked this up from the Northern Echo showing some of the costs and frequency of tribunals locally. Hartlepool Council said that it had dealt with 301 equal pay claim cases over the past five years which left the authority with a legal bill of £146,409. Typically, it gave no details of any compensation paid.
Avoiding Tribunals is to me a management function and I take the frequency as an indication of some pretty poor standards of management at play. When you consider the salaries some managers receive, not to mention the elaborate HR structures within local authorities and the presence of a legal department headed up by a Chief Solicitor, you'd wonder how it is possible for such ignorance of legal requirements and employment law to be so prevalent. What exactly are we paying these people for? Not their expertise apparently.

http://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/10147204.Councils_face_the_strain_due_to_employment_tribunal_bill_from_suing_staff/?ref=rss