How much compensation do breach of contract claims award at an employment tribunal?

Across 10,449 UK breach of contract tribunal cases with a recorded remedy since 2017, the median total award was £4,044 and the largest was £3,449,329.

What percentage of breach of contract claims succeed at an employment tribunal?

Of 12,054 breach of contract claims decided on the merits by UK tribunals, 69% were upheld.

How many UK breach of contract employment tribunal cases are there?

Tribunal Watch has indexed 27,877 breach of contract employment tribunal judgments published on gov.uk since 2017.

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Breach of contract compensation & tribunal success rate — UK data (page 434) | Tribunal Watch

Claim pillar

Breach of contract employment tribunal cases — UK data 2017–present

Name: Breach of contract UK employment tribunal statistics
Creator: Tribunal Watch
License: https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/

Tribunal Watch has indexed 27,877 UK employment tribunal cases involving breach of contract claims, published on gov.uk since 2017. Where compensation was recorded, the median award was £4,044 (the largest £3,449,329) across 10,449 cases. Tribunals upheld 69% of the 12,054 decided breach of contract claims. These cases name 23,406 distinct employers as respondents.

Total cases: 27,877
Median award: £4,044
Claims upheld: 69%
Largest single award: £3,449,329
Distinct employers: 23,406
England & Wales: 24,879
Scotland: 2,998

Compensation in breach of contract cases

10,449 cases with a recorded award

Median: £4,044
Mean: £9,283
25th percentile: £1,608
75th percentile: £10,125
90th percentile: £20,475
Largest: £3,449,329

Figures are the total award recorded across cases that include a breach of contract claim and a published remedy — 10,449 of 27,877 breach of contract cases. Many tribunal judgments decide liability only, with compensation set at a later hearing, so they are not counted here. A judgment combining several claim types contributes its whole award. Nothing here is legal advice or a prediction of any individual outcome.

Outcomes of breach of contract claims

15,345 adjudicated claims

Outcome	Claims	Share
Upheld	8,375	55%
Dismissed	3,679	24%
Withdrawn	1,632	11%
Struck out	1,103	7%
Other	428	3%
Settled	128	1%

Counting only claims a tribunal decided on the merits (upheld or dismissed), 69% of breach of contract claims were upheld — 8,375 of 12,054. Settled and withdrawn claims are excluded from that rate. Outcomes are recorded per claim, so a judgment can uphold one claim and dismiss another.

Breach of contract cases per year

2017–2026

Year	Cases	Trend
2017	321
2018	636
2019	3,862
2020	5,472
2021	3,723
2022	3,561
2023	3,377
2024	2,991
2025	2,656
2026	1,278

Largest breach of contract awards

Top 8 by total award

Case ref.	Decided	Claimant	Primary respondent	Total award
1404855/2018	5 June 2019	In person For the	University of Southampton	£3,449,329
2202063/2014	8 November 2019	Mr M Epstein For	Government of the State of Qatar	£388,920
1803164/2021	14 September 2022	Ms E Tahir	National Grid UK Limited Heard: 2- 4 May 2023 Deliberations 26 May 2023	£357,004
3304188/2022	28 July 2023	Cyril Gregory	Petro Trace Limited	£340,213
2204168/2021	23 June 2022	Elle Kim	Finablr Ltd	£279,566
1801339/2017	9 May 2018	Miss S J Austin	Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust	£269,114
3320831/2021	30 November 2022	Mr Joh Murphy	Remus Corporation UK Limited (in compulsory liquidation)	£234,410
3305627/2024	6 August 2025	Mr Richard Cooke	Seven Resourcing Limited	£229,119

Top employers — breach of contract cases

20 ranked by case count

#	Employer	Cases
01	Secretary of State for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy	146
02	Secretary of State for Business & Trade	132
03	Royal Mail Group Limited	56
04	Tesco Stores Ltd	52
05	Mitie Limited	48
06	Qube Qualifications and Development Limited (in Creditors Voluntary Liquidation)	48
07	Asda Stores Limited	46
08	The Secretary of State for Justice	46
09	Basketdrop Ltd	31
10	Limited (in Liquidation)	30
11	Marks and Spencer plc	29
12	The Foster Partnership Ltd	29
13	Artificial Solutions UK Ltd (in Liquidation)	28
14

All breach of contract cases

27,877 cases · page 434 of 558 · chronological

Case ref.	Decided	Claimant	Primary respondent	Jurisdiction	Total award
3319960/2019	28 February 2020	Mr S Smith	Urban Outfitters Urbn UK Limited	England & Wales	—
2414583/2019	28 February 2020	Mr L Sinclair	Grundy & Co Excavations Limited	England & Wales	—
1306071/2019	28 February 2020	In person For the	Little Men and Misses Day Nursery	England & Wales	—
2305155/2019	28 February 2020	Mr T Davis	Thanet Waste Services Limited	England & Wales	—
2302614/2019	28 February 2020	Miss CL Weller	The Governing Body, Epsom College	England & Wales	—
2603436/2019	28 February 2020	Mr. C Haggerty	The White Lion Bar & Grill Limited	England & Wales	£2,727
2303361/2018	28 February 2020	Mr P Balcombe	Office Team Limited	England & Wales	—
1403196/2019	28 February 2020

Methodology

Cases on this page are identified by first-pass extraction against the locked §4.4 claim-type taxonomy — a judgment enters the breach of contract caseload if breach of contractis tagged in its classification output. A single judgment frequently combines multiple claim types, so the same case may appear on more than one claim-type page. Per-claim outcomes come from the second-pass (LLM-assisted) extraction and are recorded for each claim a judgment decides; the success rate counts only claims a tribunal decided on the merits (upheld or dismissed). Award figures are taken from the remedy section of each judgment where present; cases without a quantified award — because the tribunal only determined liability, or because the remedy hearing is pending — are excluded from the compensation figures. Regional splits follow the tribunal's jurisdiction as recorded on gov.uk. Nothing on this page is legal advice or a prediction of any outcome; for any specific matter the gov.uk judgment PDF linked from each case page is the authoritative source.