Employment law: complexity: settlement

Suffolk Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust v Hunt and Others (2009)

This case involved the level of detail which should be included in a written grievance relating to an equal pay claim.

Lord Justice Pill made the following comment:

·???????? The encouragement of negotiation, conciliation and settlement might be frustrated if the grievance procedure led to satellite litigation on technical issues about whether a statement amounted to a grievance.

Lord Justice Wall added the following:

·???????? Employment-related issues which were designed to be simple and understood by ordinary working people had become overlaid with degrees of sophisticated argument which at times render them unrecognisable.

·???????? Employment tribunals were set up as fora in which ordinary working men and women could bring claims which they had been unable to resolve in the workplace with a view to swift and straightforward resolution. To this end, the rules relating to representation were very relaxed, case management powers are wide and costs were only to be awarded in extreme circumstances.

·???????? His experience was that these essentially worthy aims were in grave danger of being frustrated by over-elaborate and sophisticated argument unintelligible to the layman.

·???????? His layman’s plea was that there should be a return to the clear intentions underlying the establishment of the employment tribunal system; that lawyers should strive for clarity and simplicity and that unions and employers should strive to make the system work in the interests of ordinary working people.