The rise in employment tribunal claims: what every employer needs to understand right now

The numbers are stark. The causes are complex. And for employers who are still treating this as someone else’s problem, time is running out.

Employment Tribunal claims are rising, and rising fast. But behind the statistics is a more important story: one about a workforce that has fundamentally changed, workplaces that have been slow to keep pace, and a legal system that is now bearing the weight of that gap.

At Thrive Law, we have always believed that the best employment law advice is the kind that prevents disputes from ever reaching a tribunal in the first place. So let me share what the data tells us, and more importantly, what it means for you as an employer.

The scale of the problem

The headline figures are impossible to ignore. In the period from April 2023 to March 2024, total Employment Tribunal claims rose from 86,000 to 97,000, a 13% increase in a single year.^[1] By the summer of 2025, single ET receipts had climbed a further 23% year-on-year, with over 515,000 claims sitting in an already creaking system.^[2]

Cases are being listed into 2027 and 2028. The backlog is not a blip. It is a structural feature of a system under extraordinary pressure. And it is set to intensify further as the Employment Rights Act 2025 comes into force, extending tribunal limitation periods and expanding access to unfair dismissal protections.^[3]

But it is the neurodiversity data that has particularly caught my attention, and should catch yours.

The neurodiversity surge

In 2020, HM Courts & Tribunals Service recorded 265 employment tribunal cases involving neurodivergent conditions. By 2025, that figure had risen to 517, representing a 95% increase in five years, with the most recent six-month period representing the highest volume of cases since records began.^[4]

Autism and ADHD are now the most commonly cited conditions. Autism-related cases reached 121 in 2025; ADHD-related cases climbed to 118, up from just six ADHD cases in the first half of 2020. That is a 750% increase in five years.^[5] Dyslexia cases rose 78%. Dyspraxia cases increased by 175%.^[5]

These are not abstract figures. Each one represents a person who felt unsupported, unheard, or discriminated against, and who eventually had no choice but to go to law to be taken seriously.

Why is this happening? The real drivers

It would be a mistake to interpret rising claims as evidence that workplaces are becoming more discriminatory. The picture is more nuanced, and in some ways more hopeful, than that. Several converging forces are at work.

1. More people are being diagnosed and seeking support

Adult diagnoses of ADHD and autism have surged in recent years. NHS data shows that 20,000 people were newly referred to mental health services for ADHD assessment in March 2025 alone, up from 18,000 the previous year. The number of patients with an open referral for suspected autism rose from just over 88,000 in July 2021 to over 122,000 by June 2022.^[6]

Many employees are receiving diagnoses mid-career and re-evaluating their past experiences through a new lens. They now understand that the struggles they faced were not personal failings. They were unmet support needs. And they are increasingly confident in asserting their legal rights.

This is not a problem. This is progress. The question is whether employers are ready to respond.

2. The pandemic permanently shifted expectations

Remote and hybrid working proved that flexibility is possible at scale. For many neurodivergent employees, the conditions created during the pandemic (quieter environments, reduced commuting, greater autonomy over their working day) were the most productive and accessible working conditions they had ever experienced.

As organisations push for a return to traditional patterns, that friction is showing up in tribunal data. Return-to-office mandates, flexible working disputes, and sickness absence processes are now among the most common triggers for claims involving neurodivergent employees.

3. Managers are not equipped

This is the hardest thing to say, but it is also the most important. According to City & Guilds research, 37% of managers receive no training on neurodiversity whatsoever.^[6] A third of neurodivergent employees report being unsatisfied with the support their employer provides.^[7]

Most managers want to do the right thing. But without training, they cannot be expected to recognise when a “performance issue” is actually an unmet support need, or when an absence pattern may be linked to a condition that qualifies as a disability under the Equality Act 2010. Issues that could be resolved early escalate into formal processes. Formal processes become grievances. Grievances become claims.

Tribunals are rarely the beginning of a problem. They are the end of a long process of breakdown. For support with training your managers / leadership team visit our training page.

The hidden risk areas employers miss

Most organisations assume discrimination claims stem from overt bias. In our experience at Thrive Law, the reality is very different. The vast majority of tribunal cases arise not from deliberate acts of prejudice, but from everyday management decisions made without adequate awareness or support.

Performance management processes that penalise differences in communication, time management, or executive function, without considering whether those differences are disability-related, carry significant legal risk. Absence management frameworks with rigid triggers that fail to account for disability-related absences can amount to indirect discrimination. Recruitment and probation processes that disadvantage neurodivergent candidates remain stubbornly common.

And perhaps most importantly: inclusive culture cannot live only in policy documents. Tribunals regularly examine what actually happened in real conversations between managers and employees, not what your staff handbook says.

A note on reasonable adjustments

I want to address one point that comes up constantly in our work with employers: the question of diagnosis.

Under the Equality Act 2010, an employee does not need a formal diagnosis to be protected as disabled. If their condition has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on their ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities, the duty to make reasonable adjustments is engaged. A formal diagnosis is not the threshold. The functional impact is.^[4]

Given NHS waiting lists for autism and ADHD assessments, which can stretch to years, this is not a theoretical point. Employers who wait for a formal diagnosis before taking action are exposed. The right approach is to refer employees to occupational health and act on the advice received, without waiting for paperwork that may never arrive.

We have developed a Reasonable Adjustments Toolkit, which you can download for FREE here.

What comes next, and why it matters more than ever

The Employment Rights Act 2025 will extend the tribunal limitation period for most claims from three to six months, and unfair dismissal rights are expected to become a day-one right from early 2027.^[3] The volume of claims will increase. The system’s capacity will not keep pace.

This means that employers who are not proactively managing their employment law risk today will face a significantly more complex landscape tomorrow, with longer exposure windows, more claims, and cases that take even longer to resolve.

Prevention is not just the right thing to do. It is the only commercially rational approach. We send out lots of useful information about Employment Rights – stay up to date by signing up to our newsletter.

My view

I founded Thrive Law because I believe that workplaces should be places where everyone can be their best and truest selves. Not as an aspiration, but as an operational reality.

The data on tribunal claims is not, in my view, a story of failure. It is a story of transition. Employees are more informed, more open about their experiences, and more willing to stand up for their rights. That is a good thing. The legal framework has not changed significantly, but the context in which it operates has changed entirely.

The employers who respond to this moment with curiosity and proactive change, who invest in their managers, review their processes and genuinely embed inclusion into how they operate day to day, will not only reduce their legal risk. They will build the kind of workplace that attracts and retains the best people.

Those who continue to treat this as a box-ticking exercise will find themselves increasingly exposed, both legally and reputationally.

If you would like to talk about how Thrive Law can help your organisation build a legally compliant, genuinely inclusive workplace, whether that is through manager training, HR process reviews or employment law retainers, we would love to hear from you. Email: enquiries@thrivelaw.co.uk