The number of discrimination claims in the employment tribunals and the Employment Appeal Tribunal continued to fall – this year by 15%, (to 186,300 claims) with age discrimination claims decreasing by almost 50%. The one category of cases that showed an increase (by 6.5%) was disability claims.

The median award in age cases nearly doubled to £6,065, and the largest single compensation award was £4.5 million (a race discrimination case).

An explanation for this decrease may be a drop in the number of class actions — the number of multiple claims dropped by 19% but single tribunal claims fell by only 2%. However, as reported by Valerie Siebert in PM, there are “just over 500,000 employment tribunal cases yet to be processed. The backlog was mainly comprised of complex multiple claims.”