One new rule that is likely to have substantial effect, will enable the tribunal to hear two or more claims that give rise to common related issues, at the same time.

“This rule could have quite an impact on costs for those appearing before the Tribunal but also enable more timely access to the Tribunal by allowing related claims to be dealt with more swiftly,” said Advocate Caroline Dutot, of Central Chambers.

“In effect, the new rule permits the tribunal to group together claims that have related issues of law or fact. For example, a group of cases that arise out of the same redundancy situation, where the concern is whether a fair redundancy process has been followed. This should reduce the time the tribunal itself has to spend on analysing and hearing cases that arise out of the same issue.”

When the tribunal decides to group a number of cases together, it will nominate a lead case which is the one it will actually hear. The final judgment will be binding on all cases within the group.

Advocate Dutot said: “This is an interesting development of the tribunal’s rules and is likely to have been driven by the need to save time and money for all parties. Hopefully the new rule will further reduce the overall workload of the Tribunal, giving more timely access to the tribunal for employers and employees.

“The publication of these procedures is an important step forward for the tribunal, employers and employees. It gives us all greater certainty about the process involved and, with the introduction of these new rules, those cases which go all the way to a tribunal hearing can be dealt with more efficiently.”