Unfair dismissal employment tribunal cases — UK data 2017–present
Tribunal Watch has indexed 39,515 UK employment tribunal cases involving unfair dismissal claims, published on gov.uk since 2017. Where compensation was recorded, the median award was £6,352 (the largest £3,449,329) across 5,343 cases. Tribunals upheld 38% of the 15,214 decided unfair dismissal claims. These cases name 29,766 distinct employers as respondents.
Total cases
39,515
Median award
£6,352
Claims upheld
38%
Largest single award
£3,449,329
Distinct employers
29,766
England & Wales
35,770
Scotland
3,745
Compensation in unfair dismissal cases
5,343 cases with a recorded award
Median
£6,352
Mean
£13,987
25th percentile
£2,179
75th percentile
£15,597
90th percentile
£29,943
Largest
£3,449,329
Figures are the total award recorded across cases that include a unfair dismissal claim and a published remedy — 5,343 of 39,515 unfair dismissal 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 unfair dismissal claims
26,471 adjudicated claims
Outcome
Claims
Share
Dismissed
9,396
35%
Struck out
6,533
25%
Upheld
5,818
22%
Withdrawn
3,592
14%
Other
1,026
4%
Settled
106
0%
Counting only claims a tribunal decided on the merits (upheld or dismissed), 38% of unfair dismissal claims were upheld — 5,818 of 15,214. Settled and withdrawn claims are excluded from that rate. Outcomes are recorded per claim, so a judgment can uphold one claim and dismiss another.
Cases on this page are identified by first-pass extraction against the locked §4.4 claim-type taxonomy — a judgment enters the unfair dismissal caseload if unfair dismissalis 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.