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10 October 2025 / Ian Smith
Issue: 8134 / Categories: Features , Employment , Discrimination , Tribunals , Limitation
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Employment law brief: 10 October 2025

231935
Employment tribunal litigation is an adversarial business: Ian Smith spars with the importance of proper pleadings, time limits in discrimination cases & novel anonymity claims
  • Recent Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) decisions highlight procedural issues in employment litigation, including time limits in discrimination claims, the importance of properly pleading a case, and the rules around anonymity orders.
  • Key rulings clarified the distinction between continuing acts vs one-off events, reinforced the claimant’s responsibility to plead their case, and extended the scope of the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 1992 to tribunal proceedings.

One aspect of the recent case law on employment law, fully reflected in this month’s brief, is the preponderance of cases on matters of procedure. Cases on substance of course crop up, but are often just examples of well-established rules or guidelines, some going back anything up to 40 years ago.

While it is important not to give these an importance that they do not merit by reporting them—if only to retain an element of sanity for

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MOVERS & SHAKERS

Keystone Law—Milena Szuniewicz-Wenzel & Ian Hopkinson

Keystone Law—Milena Szuniewicz-Wenzel & Ian Hopkinson

International arbitration team strengthened by double partner hire

Coodes Solicitors—Pam Johns, Rachel Pearce & Bradley Kaine

Coodes Solicitors—Pam Johns, Rachel Pearce & Bradley Kaine

Firm celebrates trio holding senior regional law society and junior lawyers division roles

Michelman Robinson—Sukhi Kaler

Michelman Robinson—Sukhi Kaler

Partner joins commercial and business litigation team in London

NEWS
The Legal Action Group (LAG)—the UK charity dedicated to advancing access to justice—has unveiled its calendar of training courses, seminars and conferences designed to support lawyers, advisers and other legal professionals in tackling key areas of public interest law
The Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 transformed criminal justice. Writing in NLJ this week, Ed Cape of UWE and Matthew Hardcastle and Sandra Paul of Kingsley Napley trace its ‘seismic impact’
Operational resilience is no longer optional. Writing in NLJ this week, Emma Radmore and Michael Lewis of Womble Bond Dickinson explain how UK regulators expect firms to identify ‘important business services’ that could cause ‘intolerable levels of harm’ if disrupted
As the drip-feed of Epstein disclosures fuels ‘collateral damage’, the rush to cry misconduct in public office may be premature. Writing in NLJ this week, David Locke of Hill Dickinson warns that the offence is no catch-all for political embarrassment. It demands a ‘grave departure’ from proper standards, an ‘abuse of the public’s trust’ and conduct ‘sufficiently serious to warrant criminal punishment’
Employment law is shifting at the margins. In his latest Employment Law Brief for NLJ this week, Ian Smith of Norwich Law School examines a Court of Appeal ruling confirming that volunteers are not a special legal species and may qualify as ‘workers’
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