UK SBS FWRECR17068BEIS - Survey of Employment Tribunal Applications (SETA) 2017

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) and the Advisory Conciliation and Arbitration Service (Acas) wish to commission a survey of employment tribunal applications (SETA 2017). This survey will be the 7th in a series of surveys first undertaken in 1987.

The series aims to provide information on the characteristics of the parties in, and key features of, employment tribunal cases, for the purposes of developing and evaluating policy in this area. The content and methodology for SETA 2017 will be similar to the most recently completed SETA (SETA 2013), though updated to reflect changes to the employment tribunal system since then.

It is anticipated that the survey will be conducted using a CATI approach based on a stratified random sample of 1,500 claimants and 1,500 employers. The stratification will be by case outcome and case track, as in SETA 2013.

HM Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS) will provide the essentials of the sampling frame, which includes the names and addresses and telephone numbers of the parties, although it is important to note that we do not expect full coverage for telephone numbers, and these may not come as one single file. The headline aims of the study are: o To obtain information on the characteristics of employment tribunal applicants and respondents; o To assess the costs of going to tribunal for applicants and respondents; o To increase our understanding of how the employment tribunal claim process is working for claimants and respondents. And in so doing: o To provide evidence to feed into evaluations of existing policies relating to employment tribunals; o To provide baseline data for evaluating future policies relating to employment tribunals; o To provide information to help assess the costs and benefits of different options for regulatory change; o To provide data comparable with that collected via the 2013 survey to allow for assessments of changes over time; o To highlight areas for follow-up research such as qualitative interviewing, and identify potential participants in this research.