What Percentage of Employment Tribunal Claims Succeed? 2025/26 Data

This article applies to England, Wales and Scotland.

In brief: Of employment tribunal claims decided at a final hearing in 2025/26, 42.1% succeeded. Most claims never get that far: 86.3% ended before a final hearing, including 28.5% settled through ACAS. Yerty's analysis of 48,548 contested claim rulings shows 47.0% won, ranging from 16.3% for discrimination to 75.5% for holiday pay.

Last updated: August 2026

By Yerty | Analysis of published Employment Tribunal decisions and official MoJ/HMCTS statistics.

If you are weighing up a tribunal claim, one question sits behind everything else: do people actually win? The honest answer comes in two parts, because most claims never reach a judge at all.

This guide draws on two sources. The Ministry of Justice's annual figures for 2025/26 cover all 37,436 employment tribunal claims disposed of during the year. Alongside them, Yerty's own analysis of published tribunal decisions covers 48,548 contested claim rulings, broken down by claim type in a way the official statistics do not provide.

Important: This guide provides information about UK employment law. Yerty is not a law firm and does not provide legal advice. Data describes past cases and cannot predict the outcome of any individual claim.

What Percentage of Employment Tribunal Claims Succeed?

Two figures answer two different questions, and they should never be mixed.

At a final hearing, 42.1% of claims succeeded in 2025/26. That is 1,440 successful outcomes against 1,982 unsuccessful ones in the MoJ's annual data, leaving default judgments to one side. When both sides turn up and argue their case to the end, the result is not far off a coin toss.

Across published decisions, 47.0% of contested claim rulings went the claimant's way. Yerty's analysis covers 22,801 winning rulings out of 48,548 where a tribunal decided a defended complaint on its merits, in cases begun in 2020 or later. The two measures are built differently, yet they land in the same place: fought claims succeed roughly as often as they fail.

One more number needs careful handling. Success at a final hearing accounted for just 3.8% of all disposals in 2025/26. That figure describes how claims end, not how often the fought ones win, because its denominator includes every settlement and withdrawal. Quoting it as a success rate answers a question nobody asked.

What Actually Happens to Tribunal Claims

The bigger story of the official data is that 86.3% of claims ended before a final hearing. Settlement and withdrawal, not judgment, are how most tribunal claims finish.

Drawn as a horizontal bar chart, one bar per outcome with the longest at the top, the shape is unmistakable: settlements and withdrawals dominate the picture, while final-hearing outcomes sit in the short bars near the bottom. Source: MoJ Tribunal Statistics, 2025/26 annual.

Withdrawal is not the same as giving up. Claims are often withdrawn after a private settlement has been agreed, which is why the withdrawal rows and the ACAS row together account for over three quarters of all endings. Our guide to employment tribunal settlement rates looks at how and when claims settle in more detail.

Success Rates by Claim Type

The official statistics stop at the overall picture. Yerty's analysis of published decisions goes one level deeper: how often each type of claim succeeds when a tribunal actually rules on it.

The spread is enormous, and it follows the evidence. A holiday pay claim with clean payslips is a very different proposition from a discrimination claim that turns on why a manager acted as they did. Pay-based claims resting on documents and arithmetic succeed in most contested rulings. Claims that require a tribunal to draw inferences about motive succeed far less often.

The discrimination and whistleblowing figures deserve context rather than alarm. These rulings still produced thousands of claimant wins, including more than 2,000 successful discrimination rulings in the dataset. Settlement patterns also shape the numbers: claims an employer expects to lose may settle before any ruling is published. Our disability discrimination outcome data and unfair dismissal outcome data break these claim types down further.

What This Means for You

Prepare for a settlement, not just a showdown. With 86.3% of claims ending before a final hearing, the most likely destination for any claim is a negotiated ending. Understanding ACAS early conciliation and how settlement discussions work is at least as valuable as hearing preparation.

Documents decide the paper-based claims. The claim types with the highest success rates are the ones where payslips, contracts and dates do the talking. If your dispute is about money you can evidence, the published record suggests tribunals uphold those complaints in most contested rulings.

Harder claims reward earlier groundwork. Lower success rates in discrimination and whistleblowing rulings reflect how much these cases depend on building an inference from events over time. Keeping contemporaneous notes and preserving messages matters more, not less, when the claim turns on motive.

You have more rights than you might think, and thousands of people bring these claims successfully every year. The point of the data is not to put you off. It is to show where claims are won: on evidence, preparation, and realistic expectations about how the process ends. Our guide to making an employment tribunal claim covers the process from start to finish.

Time Limits

Act quickly. For most claims, the time limit is 3 months minus 1 day from the dismissal or act you are complaining about. You must notify ACAS to start early conciliation before submitting your ET1 form, which pauses the clock while conciliation runs.

This area of law is expected to change under the Employment Rights Act 2025: tribunal time limits are expected to extend from 3 months to 6 months from October 2026. Check for updates before relying on the longer limit.

How These Figures Are Measured

The two data sources count different things, and the differences matter.

The MoJ figures cover every claim disposed of by the tribunal system in 2025/26, however it ended. The hearing success rate of 42.1% is calculated as successful outcomes divided by successful plus unsuccessful outcomes at a final hearing, with default judgments excluded.

Yerty's figures come from published tribunal decisions, covering concluded single-claimant cases in England, Wales and Scotland begun in 2020 or later. The unit is the individual complaint, not the case: a claim raising three complaints contributes three rulings, so the 47.0% describes rulings rather than people. Default judgments (16,162 rulings) are excluded from the headline figure, and dismissals for lack of jurisdiction (5,194) are counted separately rather than as losses on the merits.

Published decisions are not a complete census of every claim, and extraction of the record is still maturing, so the Yerty figures are a coverage-honest floor rather than a final word. None of these numbers can predict the outcome of any individual case.

Frequently Asked Questions

What percentage of employment tribunal claims succeed at a hearing?

In 2025/26, 42.1% of claims decided at a final hearing succeeded: 1,440 successful against 1,982 unsuccessful, excluding default judgments. Yerty's analysis of 48,548 contested claim rulings in published decisions shows a similar picture, with 47.0% upheld in full or in part.

Do most employment tribunal claims settle before a hearing?

Most end without a final hearing: 86.3% of claims disposed of in 2025/26. ACAS conciliated settlements were the single largest outcome at 28.5%, and around 48% of claims were withdrawn or dismissed on withdrawal, often after a private settlement was agreed.

Which employment tribunal claims have the highest success rate?

In Yerty's analysis of published decisions, protective award claims succeeded in 93.8% of contested rulings, written statement claims in 83.1%, holiday pay in 75.5%, redundancy pay in 72.4% and unauthorised deductions in 70.2%. Claims built on payslips, contracts and clear statutory duties succeed most often.

Why do discrimination claims have a lower success rate?

Contested discrimination rulings succeeded 16.3% of the time in Yerty's data. Discrimination claims often turn on proving why an employer acted, which is harder to evidence than an unpaid sum. Settlement patterns may also play a part, as stronger claims can settle before any ruling is published.

How many claims reach a final hearing?

Around 13.7% of claims disposed of in 2025/26 were determined at a hearing, and that figure includes default judgments where the employer never responded. Successful outcomes at a final hearing accounted for 3.8% of all disposals, with a further 5.3% unsuccessful.

What is the time limit for an employment tribunal claim?

For most claims, 3 months minus 1 day from the dismissal or act complained about. You must notify ACAS for early conciliation before submitting an ET1, which pauses the clock. Time limits are expected to extend to 6 months from October 2026 under the Employment Rights Act 2025.

Can these success rates predict my case?

No. They describe past cases in aggregate. Outcomes depend on the facts, the evidence and how each side runs its case. The figures are most useful for setting realistic expectations about how claims tend to end and where preparation pays off.

Sources

1. "Tribunal Statistics Quarterly: January to March 2026 (including 2025/26 annual data)", Ministry of Justice, 2026 — https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/tribunals-statistics-quarterly-january-to-march-2026
2. "Tribunals statistics" (collection), Ministry of Justice and HMCTS — https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/tribunals-statistics
3. "Early conciliation", ACAS — https://www.acas.org.uk/early-conciliation
4. Analysis of published Employment Tribunal decisions, cases begun 2020 onwards, Yerty, 2026.