Vento Bands 2026: What Injury to Feelings Awards Are Worth

Vento Bands 2026: What Injury to Feelings Awards Are Worth

This article applies to England, Wales and Scotland.

Last updated: November 2026

In brief:

• Injury to feelings is a separate head of compensation in discrimination claims. It is assessed using three bands, known as the Vento bands, which are uprated every April.
• For claims presented on or after 6 April 2026 the bands are £1,300–£12,600 (lower), £12,600–£37,700 (middle) and £37,700–£62,900 (upper). The band that applies is fixed by the date your claim was presented, not the date of the hearing.
• In published judgments, about half of injury to feelings awards fall in the lower band and just under half in the middle. The median award is £9,000. Within the middle band, most awards sit in its bottom third.

What are the Vento bands?

The Vento bands are guideline ranges that Employment Tribunals use to put a figure on injury to feelings. They come from a 2002 Court of Appeal decision, Vento v Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police (No 2) [2002] EWCA Civ 1871, which set three bands for less serious, moderately serious and the most serious cases. They are uprated each year by Presidential Guidance from the Presidents of the Employment Tribunals in England and Wales and in Scotland.

The current figures come from the Ninth Addendum to that guidance, issued on 30 March 2026:

"In respect of claims presented on or after 6 April 2026, the 'Vento bands' shall be as follows: a lower band of £1,300 to £12,600 (less serious cases); a middle band of £12,600 to £37,700 (cases that do not merit an award in the upper band); and an upper band of £37,700 to £62,900 (the most serious cases), with the most exceptional cases capable of exceeding £62,900." — Presidential Guidance, Vento bands, Ninth Addendum

The bands are guidance rather than rules. A tribunal must have regard to them, and in practice awards almost always sit inside them, but a tribunal can go below the lower band floor. In one published 2020 judgment the tribunal recorded an award of £800 as "lower Vento" when the floor that year was £900.

Which bands apply to my claim?

The guidance sets the bands by the date your ET1 was presented. If your claim was presented before 6 April 2026, the previous year's figures apply even if your hearing is later. A tribunal can still adjust for inflation between presentation and the hearing where there is evidence of the change in the value of money, so the presentation-date bands are the starting point rather than a ceiling:

Each year's addendum is published on the judiciary.uk Vento guidance page. If you are reading a solicitor's letter or an ET3 that quotes band figures, check which year's figures they are using against your presentation date.

What is injury to feelings compensation for?

It compensates for the hurt, distress and humiliation caused by the discrimination itself, separately from any money you lost. The Equality Act 2010 provides for it directly:

"An award of damages may include compensation for injured feelings (whether or not it includes compensation on any other basis)." — Equality Act 2010, s.119(4)

Section 124 applies the same measure to Employment Tribunal awards, and s.124(6) provides that the amount is to correspond to what a county court could have awarded. Three points follow from that wording (our guide to how tribunals decide discrimination claims covers the liability stage that comes first):

• You do not need to have lost money to receive it. An award can be made for the injury alone.
• It is not available in an ordinary unfair dismissal claim. It is available in discrimination, harassment and victimisation claims under the Equality Act, and in detriment claims under the Employment Rights Act 1996 such as whistleblowing (ss.48–49). Ordinary unfair dismissal compensation covers financial loss only (Dunnachie v Kingston upon Hull City Council [2004] UKHL 36). For detriment claims under Part V of the 1996 Act, the EAT held in South Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service v Mansell UKEAT/0151/17 that they are akin to discrimination claims and injury to feelings is available in principle, with whether to award it a question of fact in each case.
• It is not a fine on the employer. The award reflects the effect on you, not how badly the employer behaved. The principles come from Prison Service v Johnson [1997] ICR 275 and were restated in Vento: awards are compensatory, should not be so low as to diminish respect for the law or so high as to be a windfall, and should be broadly in line with personal injury awards. The EAT in Komeng v Creative Support UKEAT/0275/18 put it as: the focus is on the actual injury suffered by the claimant, not the gravity of the employer's acts.

How does the tribunal decide which band I am in?

The tribunal looks at the effect on you: what happened, how long it went on, how it affected your health, work, relationships and confidence, and how long those effects lasted. A one-off remark with limited consequences typically sits in the lower band, but the lower band is not reserved for one-off acts: in Komeng the EAT said the bands "are not so prescriptive" and upheld a lower-band award for treatment that went on over time. A sustained campaign of harassment, or discrimination that ended your employment and had lasting effects, sits higher.

What you may want to consider when preparing your evidence:

• Describe the effect in your witness statement in concrete terms: what changed, when, for how long.
• Medical evidence is not required. A GP note or counselling record can support a higher band, but tribunals award injury to feelings on your own account where it is credible and specific.
• Where the effect amounts to a diagnosed condition, that may be a separate personal injury head rather than part of injury to feelings. In published judgments, fewer than 3% of injury to feelings awards sit alongside a personal injury award.
• Thin evidence limits the award. In Eddie Stobart Ltd v Graham [2025] EAT 14 the EAT reduced a £10,000 award, set at the bottom of the middle band, to £2,000, because the only finding on injury was that the claimant had felt "a degree of upset". The EAT listed what a tribunal may weigh: the claimant's own description of the injury, how long its consequences lasted, the effect on past, current and future work, and the effect on personal life.

What do tribunals actually award?

Yerty analysed injury to feelings awards in published Employment Tribunal judgments from 2014 to 2026, single-claimant cases only. Injury to feelings is one component of a discrimination award; for whole-case figures by claim type see what the average tribunal payout is. The full figures are in Injury to feelings awards: what the tribunal data shows. In summary:

• The median award is £9,000. Half of awards fall between £5,000 and £14,000.
• Of awards that can be placed against the bands in force when the claim was presented, half (50%) sit in the lower band and almost the same share (48%) in the middle band. About 2% reach the upper band.
• Within the middle band, 62% of awards sit in its bottom third and only 10% in its top third. The lower band is spread more evenly. The upper band appears to follow the middle-band pattern, but on too few cases to say with confidence.
• Nominal awards have risen over the period, but that tracks the annual uprating of the bands. The share of awards in each band has not moved in any consistent direction since 2019.

By protected characteristic, the median award in disability cases is about £9,900, in sex discrimination cases £9,000, in pregnancy and maternity cases £8,000, in race cases £7,500 and in age cases £5,000. The age figure rests on a small number of cases. Awards in Scotland run lower, with a median of £7,000; part of that is structural, because the bands include a 10% uplift from Simmons v Castle that a Scottish tribunal may disapply with reasons, though the gap in the data is wider than that uplift alone.

Claimants with representation received a median of £10,000 against £8,000 for those representing themselves, and were more likely to land in the middle band. That is an association in the data, not a measured effect of representation.

Does the award include interest?

No. Interest is added on top at 8% a year, and on injury to feelings it runs from the date of the discriminatory act to the date the award is calculated, rather than from the mid-point as it does for financial loss:

"in the case of any sum for injury to feelings, interest shall be for the period beginning on the date of the contravention or act of discrimination complained of and ending on the day of calculation" — Employment Tribunals (Interest on Awards in Discrimination Cases) Regulations 1996, reg 6(1)(a)

Two further adjustments can apply. Under s.207A of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 the tribunal can increase an award by up to 25% where the employer unreasonably failed to follow the Acas Code of Practice on disciplinary and grievance procedures; in published judgments about one in six injury to feelings awards carries an Acas uplift. Aggravated damages, for high-handed or malicious conduct by the employer, are a separate head in England and Wales (not available in Scotland) and appear in under 3% of cases.

What is the McRobbie award?

McRobbie v Department for Work and Pensions (1403286/2022, decided 23 April 2026) has been reported as a £17,280 award, and that is the total the tribunal ordered. It is a useful case to read because the judgment shows two separate injury to feelings awards in two different bands, plus the things that sit around them:

• £12,000 for a failure to make a reasonable adjustment (see how a tribunal decides a disability discrimination claim), which the tribunal placed at the lower part of the middle band;
• £1,500 for harassment, a one-off comment about the claimant's chair, placed at the lower level of the lower band;
• £3,780 interest on top, giving the £17,280 total;
• a costs order of £10,912 against the claimant.

So the injury to feelings element was £13,500, and the amount the claimant actually recovered after costs was around £6,400. The headline figure in the press reports (HR Magazine) is neither the injury to feelings award nor the net outcome. If you are comparing your own situation to a reported case, it is worth reading the remedy judgment itself for the same reason.

What should I do next?

If you have a discrimination claim and want to understand where the facts of your case sit, the practical steps are the same whatever band is in play:

1. Note the date your claim was presented and the band figures that applied on that date.
2. Write down the effect the treatment had on you, with dates and duration, while it is fresh.
3. Keep anything that evidences that effect: messages, GP records, sickness absence, grievance correspondence.
4. Check the time limit. A discrimination claim must normally be presented within three months less one day of the act complained of, extended by Acas early conciliation.

Yerty's Case Hub helps you organise that evidence and track your deadlines, and the Intelligence Hub shows what happened in published cases like yours.

Frequently asked questions

What are the Vento bands for 2026?

For claims presented on or after 6 April 2026: lower band £1,300 to £12,600, middle band £12,600 to £37,700, upper band £37,700 to £62,900, with the most exceptional cases able to exceed £62,900. They are set by the Ninth Addendum to the Presidential Guidance, issued on 30 March 2026, and are reviewed each April.

What were the Vento bands for 2025?

For claims presented between 6 April 2025 and 5 April 2026: lower £1,200 to £12,100, middle £12,100 to £36,400, upper £36,400 to £60,700. A claim presented in that window is assessed on those figures even if the hearing is in 2026 or later, though a tribunal may adjust for inflation.

What is the average injury to feelings award?

In published Employment Tribunal judgments the median injury to feelings award is £9,000, with half of awards between £5,000 and £14,000. About half of awards fall in the lower band and just under half in the middle band; only about 2% reach the upper band.

Do I need medical evidence to claim injury to feelings?

No. The tribunal assesses the effect on you from your own evidence, and a credible, specific account in your witness statement is enough. Medical evidence can support a higher band, and where the effect amounts to a diagnosed condition that may be a separate personal injury award.

Can I get injury to feelings for unfair dismissal?

Not for ordinary unfair dismissal, where compensation covers financial loss only. Injury to feelings is available in discrimination, harassment and victimisation claims under the Equality Act 2010, and in detriment claims under the Employment Rights Act 1996 such as whistleblowing.

Is interest added to an injury to feelings award?

Yes. Interest at 8% a year runs from the date of the discriminatory act to the date the award is calculated, so on a claim that takes two years to reach remedy the interest can add a significant sum on top of the band figure.

Which band will my claim be in?

That depends on the effect the treatment had on you, how long it lasted and how serious it was, not on how badly the employer behaved. A one-off incident with limited consequences usually sits in the lower band; a sustained campaign or treatment with lasting effects sits higher. The tribunal decides on the evidence.

Yerty research team. Statutory references checked against legislation.gov.uk and the Presidential Guidance Ninth Addendum, November 2026.

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. If your case is complex or high-value, consider speaking to a solicitor for advice specific to your circumstances.

Sources

• Presidential Guidance, Vento bands, Ninth Addendum (30 March 2026)
• Presidential Guidance, Vento bands, Eighth Addendum (2025)
• Presidential Guidance, Vento bands, original guidance (5 September 2017)
• Equality Act 2010, s.119 and s.124
• Employment Tribunals (Interest on Awards in Discrimination Cases) Regulations 1996
• TULRCA 1992, s.207A
• Vento v Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police (No 2) [2002] EWCA Civ 1871
• Dunnachie v Kingston upon Hull City Council [2004] UKHL 36
• Prison Service v Johnson [1997] ICR 275
• Komeng v Creative Support Ltd UKEAT/0275/18
• Eddie Stobart Ltd v Graham [2025] EAT 14
• South Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service v Mansell UKEAT/0151/17
• Presidential Guidance, Vento consultation response (4 September 2017)
• McRobbie v Department for Work and Pensions 1403286/2022, remedy judgment 23 April 2026 (gov.uk decisions register); press report HR Magazine
• Yerty tribunal data: 1,125 injury to feelings awards, single-claimant, published judgments 2014–2026 (see findings piece for method)