Although each employment right listed in the Table of Employment Rights (table of employment rights) has a time limit for bringing a claim to a tribunal, the limit will be extended by three months to allow for the completion of the statutory minimum dismissal and grievance procedures ( minimum dismissal procedures and dealing with grievances ).
Specifically, the normal time limit for presenting a tribunal claim (usually three months) is extended by three months:
- where the claim relates to a dismissal and the employee reasonably believes that, when the normal time limit expired, a dismissal or disciplinary procedure was still being followed in relation to the subject of the claim;
- where the employee has put a grievance in writing to the employer, as requested by the statutory grievance procedure, within the normal time limit;
- where the employee has presented a claim to the tribunal within the normal time limit but has not put a grievance in writing to the employer and waited 28 days.
Further, the tribunal may in some circumstances allow a late claim. The rules on late claims are different under discrimination law, including discrimination against part-time workers and fixed-term employees, so these are dealt with separately below (late discrimination claims ).
In cases other than discrimination, a tribunal can allow a late claim only if it is satisfied that it was not reasonably practicable for the claim to be made within the time limit and that the claim was brought within a further reasonable period. Therefore, even if a tribunal accepts that it was not reasonably practicable for the claimant to have met the time limit, it will not allow a late claim if it was not made as soon as it reasonably could have been after the time limit expired.
Tribunals are reluctant to allow late claims unless there are very good reasons for the delay. Each case will turn on its own particular facts, but previous tribunal decisions indicate that a tribunal will not necessarily allow a claim that was late because the claimant's advisers gave him or her poor or inaccurate advice or because the claimant misunderstood the law. On the other hand, a late claim may well be accepted if the reason for the delay was the claimant's illness or a postal strike.
A tribunal may also allow a late claim if the claimant discovered facts that indicated he or she had a claim only after the time limit had expired - provided the claimant could not reasonably have been expected to know those facts earlier. For example, a tribunal may allow a late claim of unfair dismissal for redundancy if the claimant discovered over three months after being dismissed that there were suitable alternative vacancies for which he or she could have been considered but was not.
A late claim will be allowed under the discrimination legislation and the legislation on part-time workers and fixed-term employees if the tribunal considers that, in all the circumstances of the case, it is just and equitable to do so. This gives the tribunal much wider discretion than it has in relation to other claims, where the question is whether it was reasonably practicable to bring the claim in time. For example, a tribunal might allow an claimant to bring a late discrimination claim because he or she reasonably misunderstood the law, whereas it would be unlikely to accept a late unfair dismissal claim on that basis.