The costs of justice: barriers and challenges to accessing the employment tribunal system

In its previous guise as the Industrial Tribunal, the Employment Tribunal was intended to provide an “easily accessible, speedy, informal and inexpensive” route to workplace dispute resolution (Royal Commission on Trade Unions and Employers’ Associations 1968, Cmd 3623, London, HMSO, hereinafter ‘the Donovan Report’). Whether that ideal was ever achievable is open to dThis chapter will explore the challenges encountered by those seeking to access the ET system with a particular focus on those claimants who do not have trade union support and who cannot easily afford to pay for legal advice and representation. The aim of the chapter is to identify the costs of justice in this context and to suggest how such costs might best be met. ebate but it certainly cannot be claimed for the institution that we know today.