The number of in-person hearings is rising but video hearings are here to stay. That is the main message from the President of the Employment in England and Wales, Judge Barry Clarke. We’ll speak to a lawyer to see how those hearings are playing out in practice, from a Respondent’s perspective.

Barry Clarke’s comments come in the employment section of the Senior President of Tribunals Annual Report 2022. He says: ‘We continue to ‘clock up’ well over 2,000 hours on the Cloud Video Platform each week. Our road map contains more details about how we plan to use video and telephone over the coming year, and our aspiration to reduce reliance on video in our more complex cases. We anticipate moving from CVP to its intended replacement, the Video Hearings service during the coming year.’

He identifies five challenges for the Tribunal System, problems affecting service levels:
1 There continues to be a significant problem of excessive waiting times, especially in London and the South East of England.
2 There has been a high turnover of staff in many regional offices, and significant understaffing in many locations.
3 The physical estate in some regions is too small, too frail, or both.
4 Operational and strategic decision-making has been impaired by the absence of management information since Spring 2021.
5 The Employment Tribunals north and south of the border are now in the grip of the modernisation process known as HMCTS reform.

All of those factors combined mean...