In a move that could make Employment Tribunal (‘ET’) litigation less appealing to many employers, the ET has started publishing its judgments online here.
Hat-tip to Ian Pilbeam of The HR Dept for alerting me to this.
Anyone can search the database and find judgments about their current or future employers. Search results can be filtered by allegations of discrimination, harassment, blacklisting and unfair dismissal, among others.
Previously, you could obtain ET judgments either by a request in the post (for a fee) or after a trip to Bury St Edmunds (or Glasgow for Scottish cases). The new database creates a far greater access to justice and may enhance the risk of adverse publicity for employers accused of ill-treating their workers.
At the moment the database holds cases going back to around June 2016. However, according to Personnel Today (writing when the database was announced last year):
HMCTS has not yet made a decision regarding whether or not past judgments will be placed online.
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