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

Across 5,389 UK unfair dismissal tribunal cases with a recorded remedy since 2017, the median total award was £6,357 and the largest was £3,449,329.

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

Of 15,370 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 39,979 unfair dismissal employment tribunal judgments published on gov.uk since 2017.

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Unfair dismissal compensation & tribunal success rate — UK data (page 790) | 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 39,979 UK employment tribunal cases involving unfair dismissal claims, published on gov.uk since 2017. Where compensation was recorded, the median award was £6,357 (the largest £3,449,329) across 5,389 cases. Tribunals upheld 38% of the 15,370 decided unfair dismissal claims. These cases name 30,108 distinct employers as respondents.

Total cases: 39,979
Median award: £6,357
Claims upheld: 38%
Largest single award: £3,449,329
Distinct employers: 30,108
England & Wales: 36,174
Scotland: 3,805

Compensation in unfair dismissal cases

5,389 cases with a recorded award

Median: £6,357
Mean: £14,006
25th percentile: £2,184
75th percentile: £15,703
90th percentile: £30,017
Largest: £3,449,329

Figures are the total award recorded across cases that include a unfair dismissal claim and a published remedy — 5,389 of 39,979 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

26,691 adjudicated claims

Outcome	Claims	Share
Dismissed	9,500	36%
Struck out	6,576	25%
Upheld	5,870	22%
Withdrawn	3,600	13%
Other	1,039	4%
Settled	106	0%

Counting only claims a tribunal decided on the merits (upheld or dismissed), 38% of unfair dismissal claims were upheld — 5,870 of 15,370. Settled and withdrawn claims are excluded from that rate.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	4,870
2023	4,455
2024	4,023
2025	3,589
2026	2,399

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	324
02	Tesco Stores Ltd	192
03	Asda Stores Limited	156
04	The Secretary of State for Justice	116
05	Mitie Limited	101
06	Marks and Spencer plc	89
07	Sainsbury’s Supermarkets Limited	74
08	Department for Work and Pensions	73
09	John Lewis plc	68
10	Openreach Ltd	67
11	Wm Morrison Supermarkets Limited	66
12	DHL Services Limited	59
13	Amazon UK Services Limited	56
14	Jaguar Land Rover Limited	54
15	Lidl Great Britain Limited

All unfair dismissal cases

39,979 cases · page 790 of 800 · chronological

Case ref.	Decided	Claimant	Primary respondent	Jurisdiction	Total award
2202479/2018	31 December 2017	Mr I Sadiq	National Audit Office	England & Wales	—
2302849/2016	22 December 2017	Mr P J O’Neill	EDF Energy plc	England & Wales	—
2300729/2017	22 December 2017	Mr C Nicholls	Royal Mail Group Limited	England & Wales	—
2301638/2016	21 December 2017	Mr I S Pennels	The Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis	England & Wales	—
4104512/2017	21 December 2017	Mr James Gaffney	Represented by: Mr J Jardine –10 Representative TSB Bank plc	Scotland	—
4100803/2017	21 December 2017	E.T. Z (WR) EMPLOYMENT TRIBUNALS (SCOTLAND) Case No: S/4100803/17 Held in Glasgow on November 2017 Employment Judge: J M Hendry (sitting alone) Mr Andrew Taylor	Timbmet Ltd	Scotland	—
3303561/2019	20 December 2017	Mr Clayton De Beauville	Hertsmere Borough Council	England & Wales	£2,000

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.