How the estimator works

The estimate is built from two sources:

1. Tribunal Intel database — 26,901 published Employment Tribunal decisions, each with a case number and a decision date. The last four digits of the case number encode the filing year (e.g. 2309138/2024 was filed in 2024), which lets us calculate how long each case took from filing to published decision.
2. MOJ Tribunal Statistics Quarterly (July–September 2025) — the Ministry of Justice publishes quarterly data on open caseload, receipts, and disposals. The latest figures show single ET open caseload up 33% year-on-year and disposals down 10%, meaning cases filed today will take longer than cases filed in 2024.

The estimate measures time from ET1 filing to published written decision — not time to the hearing itself.

In many cases the tribunal hears the evidence, then takes time to write up and publish the judgment. The hearing typically takes place weeks or months before the written decision appears. If you need to estimate when you will be in the hearing room, expect this to be earlier than the decision window the tool shows.

The published decisions do not include a field for which tribunal office or city handled the case. Country of jurisdiction — England & Wales or Scotland — is the only geographic dimension reliably available in the data.

Scotland cases resolve faster on average — 11.8 months vs 14.5 months for England & Wales in 2024 filings.

For each jurisdiction, we calculate three figures from 2024 filings in the database:

• P25 (25th percentile) — 25% of cases resolved faster than this. Used as the earliest estimate.
• Average — mean time from filing year to decision. Used as the most likely estimate.
• P75 (75th percentile) — 75% of cases resolved faster than this. Used as the latest estimate.

We use 2024 as the base year because it is the most recent year with a large enough sample of completed cases. 2025 cases are excluded — most are still open, so the averages would be misleadingly low.

The pattern is real and holds within both jurisdictions. Across 2023–2024 filings, discrimination cases consistently took 4–6 months longer than unfair dismissal cases in the same jurisdiction. For example, in England & Wales:

The multipliers are calculated as: average months for that claim type ÷ unfair dismissal average (17.5 months). Types with insufficient volume use estimates based on adjacent claim types.

Caveat: many cases have multiple claim types — a case tagged as both "unfair dismissal" and "disability discrimination" appears in both buckets. This means the multipliers are directional rather than precise.

The 2024 base figures reflect cases that have already resolved. But the tribunal backlog is growing — the MOJ's latest statistics (Q2 2025/26) show:

• Single ET claim receipts up 33% year-on-year
• Single ET open caseload up 33% year-on-year
• Single ET disposals down 10% over the same period
• Single claim open caseload at its highest ever level in the published timeseries

Cases filed today will join a longer queue than cases filed in 2024. We apply a forward multiplier of 1.2× (20% uplift) to the adjusted base figure. This is conservative — the true uplift could be higher if the backlog continues to grow at the same rate.

Before a case is listed for hearing, two things happen that add time:

1. ACAS early conciliation — since December 2025, the mandatory early conciliation window is 12 weeks (previously 6 weeks). Most claimants must go through this before filing an ET1.
2. ET1 processing — once filed, the tribunal takes time to process the claim, serve it on the respondent, and receive the ET3 response before the case enters the listing queue.

We add 2 months to all estimates to account for this period. If you have already filed your ET1, this period has already started — the tool uses your actual filing date as the starting point.

This tool gives a statistical estimate, not a prediction. Key limitations:

• Preliminary hearings add time. Many cases have one or more preliminary hearings before the full merits hearing. These are not captured in the estimate.
• Complex cases take much longer. Multi-day hearings (5+ days) are harder to list and can push dates out by years in busy areas.
• The database only covers published decisions. Cases that settle, are withdrawn, or are decided without a published judgment are not in the sample. Published decisions may skew towards more contested, longer-running cases.
• No city or office breakdown. The data does not include which tribunal office handled the case. Waiting times within England & Wales vary significantly — London offices are known to be busier than others — but we cannot quantify this from the published data.
• The backlog multiplier is fixed. We update it when MOJ publishes new quarterly statistics, but the actual trajectory could be faster or slower.