Employment judges have been told to be tougher about granting interim relief after judges reported a sharp rise in the number of applicants seeking to take this route.
guidance The judgment, issued yesterday by Mr Justice Barry Clarke, President of the Employment Tribunal for England and Wales, and a Scottish judge, makes clear that the threshold for granting interim relief applications remains high. Guidance is effective immediately.
Interim relief, once seen as an emergency measure for a limited number of people who have been made redundant, has grown in popularity in recent years, with the number of applications across the UK rising from about 20 a year to about the same amount per month. This increase is primarily occurring in protected discovery litigation and is related to the use of AI by litigants.
Judicial authorities have reported a parallel “significant increase” in the amount of documentation accompanying such applications, straining a system already stretched to its limits under the weight of a backlog of cases.
“The court is aiming for a list,” Clark said. [interim relief] Due to the urgency, applications will be processed quickly. Other hearings are often postponed or postponed to make way for them. These trends are having a negative impact on the administration of justice, causing unnecessary delays for other users, as the success rate of applications for interim relief remains low. ”
Applications for interim relief must be made within seven days of the effective date of termination. If relief is granted, the tribunal may order the employer to reinstate the claimant, rehire the claimant in a comparable role, or make a “continuation order” to continue paying the claimant full salary. Most applications are not successful.
The new guidelines state that interim relief application hearings should not exceed three hours, including one hour for the judge to read the material provided and 30 minutes for oral submissions by both sides. If there are too many documents, the parties will be asked by the judge to select the most important ones.
To succeed where a claim concerns a protected disclosure, a claimant must be able to go beyond a “mere assertion” even at an interim stage and must show a “substantial likelihood” that the court will find that the disclosure gave rise to dismissal.
The guidance adds: “The higher the hurdles a claimant faces in making a successful claim, the harder it will be to convince a court that there is a substantial chance of success.” For example, interim relief is even less likely to be granted if there is a dispute over employment status or whether the claimant’s resignation should be interpreted as dismissal. ”
This attempt to curb the number of applications for interim relief comes at a time when the backlog of cases continues to grow. As of the end of March this year, the number of individual lawsuits was 64,000, up from 45,000 in March 2025. The Law Society described the figures as “alarming” and called on the government to take action, especially as the number of cases under the Employment Rights Act is expected to rise.
