The New ET and EAT Rules Are Now In Force. Here’s What Worries Me.

5 March 2026 • By Tom Street, Solicitor

On 2 March 2026, a new set of procedural rules came into force across employment tribunals and the Employment Appeal Tribunal. Most commentary this week has treated the changes as routine housekeeping: tidying up loose ends, reflecting existing practice, improving efficiency. And in many respects, that’s accurate. But there are aspects of these reforms that should give employees and their representatives pause.

Let me explain what’s changed and where I think the risks lie.

What the new rules actually introduce

The amendments update both the Employment Tribunal Procedure Rules 2024 (SI 2024/1155) and the Employment Appeal Tribunal Rules 1993. They follow consultations by the Tribunal Procedure Committee, which assumed rule-making responsibility from the Secretary of State on 25 April 2024 under the Judicial Review and Courts Act 2022. The TPC’s consultation ran between 24 March 2025 and 19 May 2025, with outcomes published on 3 February 2026. The reforms arrive at a moment of acute pressure: the tribunal system is currently carrying more than 500,000 open cases.

Three changes stand out.

First, judges can now give “summary reasons” for tribunal judgments orally in appropriate cases. If oral reasons are given, parties have 14 days from the date the written record is sent to request either written summary reasons or full written reasons.

Second, tighter pleading requirements are now in force. Tribunals have explicit powers to reject documents that don’t clearly set out the grounds relied upon, cannot sensibly be responded to, or amount to an abuse of process. That applies to both ET1 claim forms and ET3 responses.

Third, the EAT amendments clarify how appeal time limits are calculated, and they apply prospectively: to appeals against any tribunal judgment made on or after 2 March 2026.

Summary reasons sound efficient. They may not be.

The introduction of summary reasons under amended Rule 62 is being sold as a way to reduce the tribunal’s administrative burden and speed up the process. I understand the logic, particularly given the pressure the system is under. But I have real concerns about what this means in practice for employees who lose their case and want to appeal.

Written reasons are the foundation of any appeal to the EAT. Without a clear, detailed account of why the tribunal reached its decision, it’s extremely difficult to identify an arguable point of law. Summary reasons, by definition, leave things out. That may be fine for routine procedural decisions, but for a substantive unfair dismissal or discrimination judgment, a claimant who has just lost everything at a hearing deserves to know exactly why.

What concerns me further is that written summary reasons will not automatically be entered on the public register, unlike full written reasons which form part of the public record. Tribunal reasons serve a transparency function: they hold judges accountable and allow the public to see how employment law is being applied in practice. Removing that visibility, even partially, is not a trivial step.

The 14-day deadline: a trap for the unwary

This is the change that concerns me most. Under the new rules, parties have 14 days from receiving the written record of a decision to request either written summary reasons or full written reasons where reasons were given orally.

Fourteen days. That’s two weeks to understand what happened at your hearing, process the outcome, and make a formal request for full written reasons.

For someone with legal representation, this is manageable. Your solicitor will know the deadline exists, diarise it, and make the request as a matter of course. But the Employment Tribunal system is not populated solely by represented parties. A significant proportion of claimants, particularly those bringing claims for unfair dismissal, unpaid wages, or discrimination, appear without legal representation. They’re navigating an adversarial process with no legal training, often while dealing with the financial and emotional fallout of losing their job.

If a judge gives oral reasons and an employee doesn’t know to request full written reasons within 14 days, they could find themselves locked out of a meaningful appeal. The 14-day window is strict. And remember: to appeal to the EAT, you need full written reasons. Summary reasons are explicitly not sufficient.

How the appeal clock now works

The amendments to the EAT Rules 1993 clarify how the 42-day appeal period is calculated. This is technical but critical.

If you request full written reasons within the 14-day window, the 42-day period for lodging your appeal runs from the date those full reasons are sent to you. That’s the route that preserves your appeal rights properly.

If you don’t request full written reasons within 14 days, the 42-day period runs from the date the written record of judgment was sent. Not from when you received it. Not from when you understood it. From when it was sent.

In practical terms, this means someone who receives only summary reasons and fails to request full reasons within 14 days could find their appeal deadline has already begun ticking before they’ve fully grasped what went wrong with their case.

Tighter pleading requirements and the unrepresented claimant

The new pleading requirements are, in principle, a sensible reform. Requiring parties to set out clearly what their case actually is should make proceedings more efficient for everyone. If a respondent employer can’t articulate their defence in an ET3, they shouldn’t expect the tribunal to piece it together for them.

But tribunals now have explicit powers to reject ET1 claim forms that don’t clearly state the grounds relied upon. And that’s where I’d urge caution. The employment tribunal system was designed to be accessible to people without legal training. The ET1 form is supposed to be something an ordinary person can complete without a solicitor.

The line between a poorly drafted claim and a meritorious claim that’s been inadequately expressed is not always obvious. Workers who’ve been dismissed unfairly or discriminated against don’t always articulate their grounds in the language the tribunal expects. Stricter rejection powers will be fine if applied sensibly. If tribunals start rejecting claims on technical pleading grounds from people who’ve suffered a genuine wrong, we’ll have a serious problem. The Employment Rights Act 2025 is supposed to be opening up access to justice for workers. That intention mustn’t be undermined by procedural gatekeeping at the filing stage.

What you need to do right now

If you have an employment tribunal hearing coming up, or you’re waiting for a judgment, these rules already apply to you.

My overall view

These aren’t dramatic reforms. The tribunal system is broadly the same today as it was last week. But the detail matters, and the devil, as always, is in the implementation.

These amendments don’t exist in isolation. They arrive in a tribunal system already under enormous pressure. The Employment Rights Act 2025 is expected to extend tribunal time limits from three to six months from October 2026, and to remove the compensation cap from January 2027. Each change has its own logic. Taken together, they reshape the landscape in ways that aren’t always predictable.