How much compensation do unfair dismissal claims award at an employment tribunal?

Across 5,343 UK unfair dismissal tribunal cases with a recorded remedy since 2017, the median total award was £6,352 and the largest was £3,449,329.

What percentage of unfair dismissal claims succeed at an employment tribunal?

Of 15,215 unfair dismissal claims decided on the merits by UK tribunals, 38% were upheld.

How many UK unfair dismissal employment tribunal cases are there?

Tribunal Watch has indexed 39,515 unfair dismissal employment tribunal judgments published on gov.uk since 2017.

Loading…

Top

Unfair dismissal compensation & tribunal success rate — UK data (page 767) | Tribunal Watch

Claim pillar

Unfair dismissal employment tribunal cases — UK data 2017–present

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

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 15,215 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

26,472 adjudicated claims

Outcome	Claims	Share
Dismissed	9,397	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Withdrawn	3,592	14%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 15,215. Settled and withdrawn claims are excluded from that rate. Outcomes are recorded per claim, so a judgment can uphold one claim and dismiss another.

Unfair dismissal cases per year

2017–2026

Year	Cases	Trend
2017	529
2018	910
2019	5,942
2020	8,014
2021	5,248
2022	4,871
2023	4,455
2024	4,023
2025	3,577
2026	1,946

Largest unfair dismissal 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
2302179/2017	17 June 2022	Mr C Crow (Counsel) For the	—	£1,009,832
3304188/2022	28 July 2023	Cyril Gregory	Petro Trace Limited	£340,213
1801339/2017	9 May 2018	Miss S J Austin	Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust	£269,114
1600183/2021	27 November 2020	Ms Peak Ong	Aberystwyth University	£264,442
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
3303448/2019	25 March 2021	Scott Neto	Key People Limited	£217,039

Top employers — unfair dismissal cases

20 ranked by case count

#	Employer	Cases
01	Royal Mail Group Limited	315
02	Tesco Stores Ltd	190
03	Asda Stores Limited	155
04	The Secretary of State for Justice	114
05	Mitie Limited	98
06	Marks and Spencer plc	86
07	Sainsbury’s Supermarkets Limited	73
08	Department for Work and Pensions	71
09	John Lewis plc	67
10	Openreach Ltd	67
11	Wm Morrison Supermarkets Limited	66
12	DHL Services Limited	59
13	Amazon UK Services Limited	55
14	Jaguar Land Rover Limited	51
15	Lidl Great Britain Limited

All unfair dismissal cases

39,515 cases · page 767 of 791 · chronological

Case ref.	Decided	Claimant	Primary respondent	Jurisdiction	Total award
2206935/2018	15 November 2018	Mr M Johnson	The Chambers of Mr Andrew Trollope QC and Mr Richard Christie QC	England & Wales	—
3201414/2018	15 November 2018	Mr L Edwards	Academies Enterprise Trust	England & Wales	—
4118425/2018	15 November 2018	ETZ 4(WR) EMPLOYMENT TRIBUNALS (SCOTLAND) Case No: 4118425/2018 Preliminary Hearing at Edinburgh on November 2018 Employment Judge: M A Macleod (sitting alone) Maria Law	—	Scotland	—
4110950/2018	15 November 2018	EMPLOYMENT TRIBUNALS (SCOTLAND) Held at Aberdeen Case No: S/4110950/2018 Mrs S Moorhead	Represented by: Ms H J Durham - Solicitor Wood Group UK Limited st	Scotland	—
4116703/2018	15 November 2018	EMPLOYMENT TRIBUNALS (SCOTLAND) Case No: 4116703/2018 Mr S Chambers	Represented by: Mr M Tait, Solicitor CBRE GWS Limited	Scotland	—
1403839/2018	15 November 2018	Mr D Winfield	Tomy UK Co., Ltd	England & Wales	—
2413722/2018	15 November 2018	Ms L Saunders

Methodology

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.