We Looked at Bullying in Employment Tribunal Judgments. Here Is What We Found
Among single-claimant Employment Tribunal cases whose judgments discuss bullying, 68% included an unfair or constructive dismissal claim, 65% a discrimination claim, 31% harassment, 26% victimisation and 19% whistleblowing. Where injury to feelings was awarded, the median was £9,000 and 94% of awards fell in the lower or middle Vento band. Most compensation in these cases was for financial loss.
Bullying is not a cause of action in the Employment Tribunal. It reaches the tribunal as evidence inside another claim: harassment related to a protected characteristic, victimisation, whistleblowing detriment, or unfair and constructive dismissal. Yerty reviewed published judgments from England, Wales and Scotland whose text discusses bullying to see which claims those cases were brought under, how they fared, and what was awarded when they succeeded.
The set covers 6,142 single-claimant cases, 11.3% of the reasons-bearing judgments reviewed. Because the set is defined by the text of the judgment, it is weighted towards longer, fully reasoned decisions; the Method section sets out that effect.
This analysis comes from the same published tribunal record that underpins Yerty's wider research. Explore Yerty Intelligence Hub to search tribunal decisions and trace findings back to the source judgments.
Summary of findings
| Finding | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Unfair dismissal is the most common claim in bullying cases (68%), ahead of any discrimination claim (65%) and harassment specifically (31%). |
| 2 | Bullying cases carry harassment, victimisation and whistleblowing claims at three to four times the rate of other cases. |
| 3 | Within the bullying set, harassment claims were upheld in 17% of cases, victimisation in 14%, whistleblowing detriment in 13%, constructive dismissal in 25% and unfair dismissal in 32%. |
| 4 | Where injury to feelings was awarded, the median was £9,000; 44% of awards were in the lower Vento band, 50% in the middle and 7% in the upper. |
| 5 | Financial loss appeared in 79% of itemised awards and injury to feelings in 34%. Aggravated damages (2%) and personal injury (3%) were rare. |
| 6 | An Acas Code uplift was applied in 19% of itemised awards, most often at 10%, 15% or 25%. |
| 7 | Judgments in England and Wales discuss bullying at roughly twice the rate of Scottish judgments at every judgment length. |
Why bullying appears in judgments when it is not a claim
"Bullying" has no legal definition and is not a cause of action, yet it appears in more than one in ten reasoned judgments. The reason is that it is the word people use. Claimants describe their treatment as bullying in grievances, claim forms and witness statements; employers' policies are titled "bullying and harassment"; and tribunals, when setting out the facts, record the claimant's account in the claimant's words before applying the legal test to it. A judgment that discusses bullying is usually a judgment translating a lived complaint into one of the categories the law recognises: harassment related to a protected characteristic, victimisation, detriment for whistleblowing, or a breach of the implied term of trust and confidence serious enough to found constructive dismissal.
That translation is where most of these cases are decided. The conduct complained of may be accepted as bullying in the ordinary sense and the claim still fail, because the legal question is not whether the treatment was unpleasant but whether it was related to a protected characteristic, done because of a protected act, or a fundamental breach of contract. The outcome figures in section 2 reflect the difference in those thresholds rather than the severity of the conduct.
This matches the position taken by official guidance. GOV.UK states that bullying itself is not against the law but harassment is; Acas distinguishes bullying from harassment on the ground that harassment has a specific legal meaning. The published record shows what follows from that in practice.
1. Which claims bullying cases are brought under
Cases carry several claims; shares sum to more than 100%.
Source: Yerty Intelligence Hub, published Employment Tribunal decisions, as at 1 November 2026.
| Claim type | Share of bullying cases | Share of other cases | Ratio |
|---|---|---|---|
| Unfair dismissal (any) | 67.8% | 56.5% | 1.2 |
| Any Equality Act discrimination claim | 65.0% | 34.1% | 1.9 |
| Harassment (s.26), any characteristic | 30.5% | 7.3% | 4.2 |
| Victimisation (s.27) | 25.9% | 6.1% | 4.2 |
| Breach of contract | 24.5% | 27.6% | 0.9 |
| Direct discrimination (any) | 20.2% | 6.6% | 3.1 |
| Whistleblowing (any) | 18.8% | 6.0% | 3.1 |
| Whistleblowing detriment (s.47B) | 17.1% | 4.9% | 3.5 |
| Constructive dismissal | 7.8% | 2.4% | 3.3 |
| Automatically unfair dismissal (s.103A) | 5.0% | 1.7% | 2.9 |
Cases carry several claims, so shares sum to more than 100%. Harassment claims in the bullying set were most often related to race (11.6% of bullying cases), disability (10.6%) and sex (6.7%). Constructive dismissal and the two whistleblowing sub-types are identified from the wording of the claim and are floors rather than complete counts.
A third of bullying cases (35%) carried no discrimination claim at all. For those claimants the route to the tribunal was unfair or constructive dismissal, whistleblowing, or breach of contract.
2. Outcomes by claim type
Outcome per claim type within the bullying set, single-claimant cases.
| Claim type | Cases | Upheld | Dismissed | Withdrawn or settled | Struck out | Other |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unfair dismissal (any) | 3,910 | 31.6% | 55.6% | 2.5% | 3.8% | 6.5% |
| Constructive dismissal | 450 | 24.7% | 67.8% | 1.6% | 3.1% | 2.9% |
| Any Equality Act claim | 3,748 | 22.5% | 61.5% | 3.4% | 6.1% | 6.5% |
| Harassment (s.26), any | 1,756 | 17.2% | 68.7% | 2.8% | 4.2% | 7.1% |
| Harassment, sex | 385 | 23.1% | 62.3% | 3.1% | 4.7% | 6.8% |
| Harassment, disability | 608 | 15.6% | 75.0% | 2.3% | 2.5% | 4.6% |
| Harassment, race | 666 | 13.1% | 76.1% | 2.4% | 3.0% | 5.4% |
| Victimisation (s.27) | 1,493 | 14.0% | 72.4% | 5.4% | 4.7% | 3.5% |
| Whistleblowing detriment (s.47B) | 988 | 12.7% | 67.2% | 6.3% | 7.4% | 6.5% |
| Direct discrimination (any) | 1,164 | 8.7% | 80.2% | 3.5% | 3.2% | 4.4% |
| Automatically unfair dismissal (s.103A) | 287 | 7.7% | 77.0% | 5.9% | 5.2% | 4.2% |
Because the set is drawn from reasoned judgments, most claims in it were decided on the merits: the withdrawn and struck-out shares are low, and the dismissed share is correspondingly high. These rates describe what happened to claims that reached a reasoned decision, not the success rate of all claims filed.
3. Injury to feelings awards
168 single-claimant cases in the bullying set had an itemised injury to feelings award.
| Value | |
|---|---|
| Median | £9,000 |
| Lower quartile | £4,950 |
| Upper quartile | £15,450 |
| Minimum | £1,000 |
| Maximum | £44,000 |
Placed against the Vento bands in force when the claim was presented:
Vento band of injury to feelings awards
168 bullying-set awards, 490 other awards; band table in force when the claim was presented.
Source: Yerty Intelligence Hub, published Employment Tribunal decisions, as at 1 November 2026.
| Vento band | Bullying cases | Share | Other cases | Share |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lower | 73 | 43.5% | 220 | 44.9% |
| Middle | 84 | 50.0% | 241 | 49.2% |
| Upper | 11 | 6.5% | 22 | 4.5% |
Every award in the bullying set fell within the three bands. A handful of awards in the other set (1.4%) fell outside them, which is why its shares do not sum to 100%.
The distribution in bullying cases is close to the distribution in other discrimination cases: the presence of bullying in the judgment did not by itself move awards into a higher band. By claim type, the median injury to feelings award was £7,750 where harassment was upheld (48 cases), £10,000 where victimisation was upheld (31 cases) and £12,750 where unfair dismissal was upheld alongside a discrimination claim (60 cases). Cells for individual protected characteristics were too small to report.
4. Total compensation
Total compensation is the whole award in the case, across every claim won. It is not a value attached to the bullying.
| Set | Claim type upheld | Cases | Median | Lower quartile | Upper quartile |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bullying | All awards | 882 | £9,835 | £2,698 | £23,487 |
| Bullying | Any Equality Act claim | 263 | £17,527 | £7,413 | £40,167 |
| Bullying | Harassment (s.26) | 81 | £12,716 | £4,314 | £30,655 |
| Bullying | Victimisation (s.27) | 60 | £18,744 | £8,923 | £39,176 |
| Bullying | Whistleblowing detriment (s.47B) | 46 | £14,886 | £7,665 | £22,863 |
| Bullying | Unfair dismissal (any) | 502 | £13,746 | £5,220 | £32,665 |
| Bullying | Constructive dismissal | 30 | £19,229 | £8,972 | £37,886 |
| Other | All awards | 7,166 | £3,211 | £1,083 | £10,231 |
| Other | Any Equality Act claim | 765 | £14,445 | £7,095 | £27,945 |
| Other | Unfair dismissal (any) | 2,121 | £10,209 | £4,062 | £22,364 |
The gap between the two "all awards" medians (£9,835 against £3,211) reflects the claim mix: bullying cases are far more likely to involve discrimination and dismissal claims than wages or holiday pay claims, which dominate the other set.
For scale, the Ministry of Justice's annual tribunal statistics for 2023/24 report median awards of £6,746 for unfair dismissal, £10,253 for race discrimination, £16,161 for sex discrimination and £17,218 for disability discrimination across all remedy awards. The medians here are of the same order. They run somewhat higher for unfair dismissal because the bullying set is weighted towards fully reasoned judgments in which dismissal claims sit alongside discrimination claims, and the figures are whole-case totals.
5. What the awards were made up of
Of the 502 bullying-set awards with an itemised breakdown:
| Component | Share of itemised awards, bullying | Share, other cases |
|---|---|---|
| Financial loss (any pecuniary head) | 79.1% | 89.6% |
| Injury to feelings | 34.3% | 12.1% |
| Interest | 22.5% | 7.6% |
| Acas Code uplift | 18.7% | 9.5% |
| Personal or psychiatric injury | 3.2% | 0.3% |
| Aggravated damages | 2.0% | 0.5% |
Injury to feelings appears in bullying cases at nearly three times the rate of other cases, which follows from the claim mix. Even so, financial loss remains the dominant component. Personal injury and aggravated damages, the heads most often associated with bullying in public discussion, were awarded in a small minority of cases.
6. Acas Code uplift
158 bullying-set cases had an uplift within the statutory 0–25% range. The median uplift was 15%, with a lower quartile of 10% and an upper quartile of 25%. The three most common values were 10% (46 cases), 25% (48 cases) and 15% (31 cases). In other cases the median was 20%.
7. Where bullying appears in judgments
2026 is year to date.
Source: Yerty Intelligence Hub, published Employment Tribunal decisions, as at 1 November 2026.
| Judgment year | In-scope cases | Bullying cases | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | 4,220 | 452 | 10.7% |
| 2018 | 3,698 | 418 | 11.3% |
| 2019 | 6,081 | 690 | 11.3% |
| 2020 | 5,124 | 541 | 10.6% |
| 2021 | 7,107 | 855 | 12.0% |
| 2022 | 6,657 | 739 | 11.1% |
| 2023 | 6,476 | 783 | 12.1% |
| 2024 | 5,808 | 735 | 12.7% |
| 2025 | 5,928 | 626 | 10.6% |
| 2026 (to date) | 3,146 | 299 | 9.5% |
The share has been stable at 10% to 13% since 2017. England and Wales judgments discuss bullying in 12.7% of cases against 5.7% in Scotland. That gap holds within every judgment-length band: among the longest judgments (over 80,000 characters), 54.3% of England and Wales cases discuss bullying against 41.5% of Scottish cases; among judgments of 20,000 to 40,000 characters, 14.2% against 9.7%. London Central (20.0%), Cambridge (19.6%) and East London (16.5%) had the highest regional shares; most other English and Welsh regions sat between 11% and 13%.
Method
This analysis was produced with Yerty Intelligence Hub. It was used to identify every published Employment Tribunal judgment in England, Wales and Scotland whose text discusses bullying, to bring those judgments together at case level, and to read the claims, outcomes and awards recorded for each case. The data was taken as at 1 November 2026.
The scope is judgments with reasons or of substantial length (56,694 cases). A case is in the bullying set if any such judgment in it uses a bullying term: bully, bullied, bullying, bullies, belittle and its forms, and common misspellings of those words. Words that recite the statutory harassment test ("intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive") were deliberately excluded so that the set is not defined by the presence of a harassment claim. Multi-claimant cases (2,430, of which 155 in the bullying set) are excluded from every figure.
Because membership depends on the words of the judgment, it rises steeply with judgment length: almost none of the shortest judgments qualify, while over half of the longest do. Shares in this article are therefore shares of reasoned judgments that discuss bullying, not of claims about bullying, and cross-nation comparisons are shown within length bands for that reason.
Claim types and outcomes come from the claims recorded in each case's judgments. Constructive dismissal and the split between whistleblowing detriment and whistleblowing dismissal are identified from claim wording and are floors. Award figures use only awards that passed Yerty's review checks and were not per-capita; 882 of 1,303 bullying-set awards qualified, and 502 of those had an itemised breakdown, which is the base for the injury to feelings and component figures. Vento bands are applied using the band table in force in the year the claim was presented. Cells with fewer than 30 cases are not reported.
The dataset is drawn from published litigation. It cannot estimate how common workplace bullying is, how often it leads to a claim, or how claims that settled before judgment were resolved.
For the practical position of someone being bullied now, see Yerty's guide to compensation for bullying at work.
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Frequently asked questions
Is bullying a claim at the Employment Tribunal?
No. There is no standalone bullying claim. In Yerty’s review of judgments that discuss bullying, the claims actually brought were unfair dismissal (68% of cases), discrimination (65%), harassment (31%), victimisation (26%) and whistleblowing (19%). Bullying is evidence within those claims rather than a cause of action in itself.
How much do tribunals award for injury to feelings in bullying cases?
Across 168 single-claimant cases with an itemised award, the median was £9,000, the interquartile range £4,950 to £15,450 and the maximum £44,000. 44% of awards fell in the lower Vento band, 50% in the middle band and 7% in the upper band.
Do bullying cases receive higher injury to feelings awards than other discrimination cases?
Not on this evidence. The Vento band distribution in bullying cases (44% lower, 50% middle, 7% upper) is close to that in other discrimination cases (45%, 49%, 5%). The presence of bullying in the judgment did not by itself move awards into higher bands.
What is most compensation in bullying cases for?
Financial loss. 79% of itemised awards in bullying cases included compensation for lost earnings or other financial loss, against 34% including injury to feelings. Aggravated damages appeared in 2% of awards and personal injury damages in 3%.
How often do harassment claims succeed in bullying cases?
Within the bullying set, harassment claims were upheld in 17% of cases and dismissed in 69%, with the rest withdrawn, struck out or otherwise disposed of. Sex-related harassment was upheld more often (23%) than disability (16%) or race (13%). These are rates among claims that reached a reasoned judgment.
How often is an Acas Code uplift applied?
In 19% of itemised awards in bullying cases, against 9.5% in other cases. The median uplift was 15%, and the most common values were 10%, 15% and the maximum 25%.
Are bullying cases more common in some regions?
Judgments discussing bullying were most common in London Central (20%), Cambridge (20%) and East London (17%), and least common in Scotland (6%). The Scottish gap persists within every judgment-length band, so it is not explained by shorter Scottish judgments alone.
Can this data say how common bullying at work is?
No. The set consists of published tribunal judgments that discuss bullying. It excludes bullying that was never complained about, grievances resolved internally, claims settled before judgment and short judgments without reasons. It describes bullying as it appears in litigation, not in workplaces generally.
Sources
- Yerty Intelligence Hub analysis of single-claimant Employment Tribunal cases whose published judgments discuss bullying, as at 1 November 2026.
- Employment tribunal decisions, GOV.UK, published Employment Tribunal decisions for England, Wales and Scotland.
- Workplace bullying and harassment, GOV.UK.
- Equality Act 2010, sections 26 and 27, legislation.gov.uk.
- Employment Rights Act 1996, section 47B, legislation.gov.uk.
- Code of Practice on disciplinary and grievance procedures, Acas.
- Presidential Guidance: Employment Tribunal awards for injury to feelings and psychiatric injury, Judiciary of England and Wales, with annual addenda.
- Tribunal statistics: Employment Tribunal and EAT annual tables 2023 to 2024, Ministry of Justice.
- If you're treated unfairly at work: being bullied, Acas.
How to cite this
Yerty (2026). We Looked at Bullying in Employment Tribunal Judgments. Here Is What We Found. Yerty Intelligence Hub. https://yerty.co.uk/tribunal-data/findings/bullying-at-tribunal-compensation (last updated November 2026).Figures reflect the analytical subset used for this question; see our methodology for corpus coverage. Free to cite for non-commercial use with attribution to Yerty. For commercial use, bulk or API access, or AI training, see our Data Use & Citation policy.
Figures derived from Employment Tribunal decisions published by HM Courts & Tribunals Service on GOV.UK, licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Analysis © Yerty. Re-use is subject to our Data Use & Citation policy.