Unfair dismissal compensation & tribunal success rate — UK data (page 791) | Tribunal Watch
Claim pillar
Unfair dismissal employment tribunal cases — UK data 2017–present
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Withdrawn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 Settled and withdrawn claims are excluded from that rate.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.
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.