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WALES EMPLOYMENT TRIBUNAL

USER GROUP MEETINGS

ALL WALES MINUTES FOR: 10 June 2020

Conducted via CVP due to COVID-19 pandemic

1. The meeting was chaired by Acting Regional Employment Judge Sian Davies (SD), with input from Acas: Gareth Petty (GP) and Andrew Way (AW). Four representatives of HMCTS attended the meetings: Melanie Hourihane and Leanna Conradson in Cardiff and Julie Wishart and Beth Sear in Wrexham.

2. The meetings were attended by Daniela Mahapatra (representative of ELA’s Wales region and NHS Wales), Lorrelee Traynor (NHS Wales), Angharad Booker (National Education Union), Rachel Ford-Evans (Darwin Gray), George Pollitt of Counsel (Iscoed Chambers), Emily Thomas (Hugh James), Carolyn Issac (Swansea Council), Sioned Eurig (NHS Wales), Carys Lodwick (Red Kite Law), Elissa Thursfield (Gamlins Law), Anna Denton-Jones (Refreshing Law), Steffan Griffith (Bangor University), Helen Randall of Counsel (Iscoed Chambers), John Toner (Unite the Union), Sarah Thyer (Swansea Council), Clare Primett (NHS Wales), Rhiannon John (MDJ Law), Juliette Franklin (Slater and Gordon), Sophie George (Slater and Gordon), Craig Davies (Swansea Council), Simon Thomas (Hutchinson Thomas), Caroline Laxton (Make UK), Jessica Forrister (Make UK), Neville Chesterfield (Make UK), Sarah Hexter (Slater and Gordon), Lowri Phillips (Geldards), Jennifer Capelen (Denbighshire Council), Hannah Belton (Morgan LaRoche), Adam Leith (NHS Wales), Garyn Young (Capital Law), Nick Cooksey of Counsel (River Chambers), Ian Winrow, Rhiannon Dale (Hugh James), Evelyn Morgan (Vale of Glamorgan Council), Charlene Burbery (Lewis Silkin), Joga Singh (Geldards) and Sammie Morris (NHS Wales) and Clive Reader (Digital Operations HMCTS) . Updates were provided in relation to the matters set out below.

Introductions

Sian Davies - Acting Regional Employment Judge

3. Welcome to everybody who has joined us today on this video meeting. We have on the line with us colleagues from ACAS, Employment Judges in the Wales Tribunal, Trade Union Officials, Solicitors, Barristers, members of in-house legal teams and Local Authorities and other users as well and you are all very welcome and thank you for joining us on video today on our Cloud Video Platform.

4. I will conduct my session first, I am then going to ask Daniela Mahapatra the outgoing Employment Lawyers Association Representative to talk briefly about the ELIPS pro-bono legal advice clinic which is due to go online shortly, then

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Mel Hourihane our Delivery Manager in Wales ET will give you an update from the staff and administration perspective, then we will be hearing from our colleagues at ACAS from Gareth Petty their Director and then we will have time hopefully at the end for some questions. I have been sent a question in advance but if there are additional questions as we go through today’s meeting can I ask that you type them in the “chat” function in the bottom left hand of the page. We will aim to finish the meeting at 4pm today.

5. Ground rules - you have been muted as you came into the meeting, there’s a

lot of us in here in this meeting, there are almost 50 of us, so we could not have everybody’s microphones open all at once. If you face any technical issues, or you want to ask a question, please use the chat function and that will be monitored during the course of the meeting by Leanna Conradson who is the Head of our Correspondence Team and also from Technical Support we are receiving especially for the meeting, from Clive Reader and I am grateful to both of them for helping us with today.

6. I will give an update from the judicial perspective in Wales ET, and before I talk

about pandemic related matters, I just wanted to give you the context to that, and that is, the latest official quarterly statistics of the Tribunal are published and available on the internet but they go to December 2019, so there is a time lag. Those statistics show that we were already dealing with an increased number of claims, our claims from single Claimants had increased by 25% when compared with the same period the year before. Our outstanding caseload had increased to 28% when compared with the previous year and we had also seen increase with regard to receipts of multiple claims.

7. So that is the context and then the pandemic hit and the consequences of that

being the President’s joint direction in England, Wales and Scotland that all in person hearings should be postponed.

FAQs

8. Now I hope that many of you have been able to see the “frequently asked questions” that have been produced by the Presidents together with the appendix to the most recent version which was issued on 1 June, because at the end of the “frequently asked questions” the President set out an aspirational road map for the next six months. That is split into four stages, there is reference to June and what is going to be happening in June and then the rest of the year is split into two month increments with details of what they hope the Tribunal will be able to achieve during those periods of time. The roadmap will give you a good idea of what we are trying to achieve on a National scale, although I must stress that there will be differences between regions as to what they can manage depending on the number of staff available, Judges and training on various different platforms for holding hearings.

9. So where we are in Wales at the moment, is we are reviewing the cases that are still in the list from 29 June onwards and many of you if you do have such cases listed for Final Hearing from that date will start to hear from us if you haven’t already, either with news I’m afraid that if it’s a longer case it’s likely to

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be postponed, but if it is a shorter case that we are going to try to retain the listing but hold the hearing in a different way. That will usually be on this video platform which is why I wanted to hold the user group meeting today on CVP so you have the opportunity to see what it’s like for yourselves. In essence it’s a bit like Zoom, but for the Tribunals.

10. We are going to try to retain some form of listing for all cases that are in the

list from 29 June. If that isn’t the full hearing then we will retain a Preliminary Hearing for case management or perhaps a Preliminary Hearing to deal with a particular issue, so you will be hearing from us shortly. CVP

11. I’m now going to talk a little bit about this video platform itself. You’ll all be familiar I’m sure that HMCTS has been going through a reform period for several years now with changes to estate and also to technology and the Employment Tribunal was due to undergo reform from this year into 2021. The pandemic has rather accelerated that process insofar as remote hearings go, so we are having to move on to video hearings at a much earlier stage than had been envisaged, probably about 18 months ahead of where we thought we would have been had there not been the pandemic. I want to emphasise that the Tribunal had not started planning for video hearings at all when we had the instructions to stay at home due to the pandemic, so staff and Judges and non legal members are all very much ‘in at the deep end’. We have not had organisational training on the use of the platform for conducting these types of remote hearings, we are having to teach ourselves and I do really want to thank all of my colleagues, Judges, staff and members, for their willingness to engage with video hearings and teach themselves. I’m also grateful to the users who have been willing to give things a go with us as well and to be patient with us as we’re learning.

12. Wales is a little bit ahead of the curve because we are used to dealing with one form of remote hearing and that is Telephone Preliminary Hearings, that’s not something that’s unusual for any of us or any of our users, but that was not the case in many regions in England.

13. The CVP platform that we are on today is being developed into a product which

is more sophisticated for full hearings, but that product is unlikely to be ready for quite some time - more than a year.

14. Because of the pandemic, Wales agreed to be a trial region for CVP video

hearings along with Glasgow and the East Midlands but now because of some successes that we have had CVP rooms have started to be rolled out into other regions in England. Currently there are 150 rooms available across all of England and Wales. I mentioned that we haven’t had organisational training, the Tribunal National Training Committee has been working hard on some CVP training for all Judges and members and that has just been agreed this week and it’s due to be rolled out initially to salaried Judges then to our fee paid colleagues and then we hope to train the non-legal members over the summer period.

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15. So the majority of cases that we hope to proceed with in some form over the summer we intend to list for short Preliminary Hearings over this video platform to test the ability of the parties to connect and also to assess its suitability, so you may start to see short Preliminary Hearings for 30 minutes in the list over the coming months where we will go through that process. Parties should not be compelled to use a video platform if there are good reasons for not be able to and we will take those objections into account when deciding how and if a hearing can go ahead, but the reality is those parties who are not able to participate in a hearing by video platform are likely to wait a lot longer for their Final Hearing to happen.

16. When it comes to the functionality on CVP the document sharing is not ideal, and that means we may need to be looking at electronic bundles or the provision of paper bundles in order to proceed with Final Hearings. The reason is, is when you share a document on CVP, the resolution is not particularly good and it can be hard to read the font unless it’s very large.

17. The other thing to bear in mind about video hearings is they do tend to take a

little bit longer, introductions, connections at the start of a hearing can take 10 or 15 minutes, just making sure that everybody can see and hear and be connected properly to the hearing. Breaks in the hearing are really important because users and Judges who have done video hearings have found them tiring. We are potentially looking at longer listings for hearings that go ahead by video.

18. We do have some good news from our trial, we have already started the CVP

hearings on many of our case management hearings and also on some public hearings dealing with preliminary issues such as amendments. We held a full panel Remedy Hearing by CVP in May and we are due to hold another one next month and I’m really grateful to the non-legal members who have been willing to sit on those hearings without any formal training, but we can’t rely on members to do so because it will depend on their level of comfort with technology and their ability to connect in a suitable place from a remote location. The other good news from the trial is that we had a number of successful mediations on CVP and we think that Judicial Mediation is something that is very promising in going forward on the telephone or on video platform regardless of the pandemic because it seems to work very well.

19. So other than hearings that are totally on video platform we are also planning

for the possibility of in person hearings and the return to those, but we are going to have to do that on a limited basis. We think that more likely we are going to be dealing with hybrid hearings were we have a mixture of some people in the Tribunal hearing room and some people accessing it remotely. Hybrid hearings are quite complicated, not only because of the need to adhere to social distancing requirements of 2 metres apart within a workplace, but also because we need to think about how many people we can fit into our physical hearing rooms and how many people will be required to give evidence and where they will be during a long case.

20. We do have a limited ability to hold panel hearings in our physical hearing

rooms and that is because of the architecture of the dais, we can’t fit three

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people 2 metres apart on the dais that we have at present in Cardiff Magistrates’ and the situation is more acute in other venues that we use around Wales.

21. Another issue we have been having to consider is that of open justice and the

fact that we need to comply with Rule 46 when it comes to any public hearing in that any member of the public needs to be able to hear what the Tribunal hears and to be able to see the witness. Access for the public and the press at the moment is likely to be via CVP, even for an in person hearing, because of the need to keep to a maximum number of people coming into buildings to enforce social distancing. To carry out those hearings we need to have audio visual equipment set up in a hearing room and the only hearing room in Cardiff Magistrates’ that we have access to is Court 7. We have made enquiries and Social Security have offered us the use of a room in Eastgate House which is just across the road in Cardiff, so that is helpful but again it’s quite a small room, so we have all of these factors to think about. The provision in other parts of Wales in terms of audio visual equipment is something that is being investigated at present, but I will come to our use of venues across Wales a little bit more in a moment.

22. So when you are attending a Preliminary Hearing to discuss how and if your hearing can go ahead please can you be prepared to give quite a lot of detail about who will be needed to attend and on which days. Try to liaise with the other side on timetabling and think about things like how you are going to manage bundles. If you are coming into a hearing and HMCTS guidance is that you should not be sharing bundles at all, so that would mean having an individual copy of the bundle for each witness. We also need to think about people are connecting remotely and how they wish to take the oath. Do they have a Holy book available? Those are the types of enquiries you need to start making with your witnesses. You’ll also need to think about how you are going to communicate with the parties and witnesses in your case if you are a representative as well as conducting the hearing. Again I think hearings are going to take longer, whether they are hybrid or fully in person, because there is going to be a need for staggered start times to reduce pinch points at the reception and security check points in the building and to reduce the overall footfall. We’re also going to need to think about breaks during the course of the hearing if it’s in person, cleaning the witness stand in between witnesses and regular hand washing breaks. So the message is if you can at all attend the hearing fully remotely that is a lot simpler than trying to deal with the hybrid hearing, but they are still likely to take longer. Venues.

23. At present HMCTS are carrying out risk assessments in all of our venues to determine which ones can be opened and start to be used from 29 June. Because of all the issues that I have mentioned which are pandemic related we are only able to open one hearing room in Cardiff to begin with, but that is something that is going to be reviewed on a weekly basis to see whether that can be increased and we do have the use of Eastgate House.

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24. The situation in North and West Wales is more complicated, we usually have the use of Mold during the first 2 weeks of every month, but at present that hearing centre is only being opened to deal with criminal cases and so civil, family and tribunals will be asked to use rooms that are available in Wrexham and we are looking at other potential options in the North.

25. In Pontypridd our usual courtroom will not be open and again we will have this

competing pressure from other jurisdictions who want to use the available courtrooms.

26. When it comes to any of the other venues that you may be familiar with using across Wales the same issue applies, we will be in competition with civil and family for the available space and all of these jurisdictions are going to have backlogs.

27. I am going to ask Mel to deal with the issue of risk assessments in more detail,

but I just wanted to make you aware that if you are considering the risks associated with attending a hearing in person then you can ask the Delivery Manager at the court venue to send you a copy of the risk assessment.

Resources

28. We have lost Barry Clarke, he is our new President, but obviously that is very good for Wales because Wales is very much on his radar and he is still going to be based here in Cardiff but over the road in Eastgate House. Also sadly we are going to be losing Wayne Beard, he is now going to be a Circuit Judge based in Cardiff from 6 July so we only have Wayne for the next few weeks and we’ll be very sorry to see him go.

29. Some good news is that Philip Davies has returned from Croydon, where for the last fourteen months or so he has been the Acting Regional Employment Judge and he comes back to Wales to sit 80% as an Employment Judge with us, but he also has a commitment to sit as a Recorder in family.

30. Another piece of good news is that Vincent Ryan our Employment Judge who

is based in North Wales will be 100% dedicated to Wales from 1 July which is really good news because at present we split his time and share him with Liverpool.

31. There has been a recent selection exercise for fee paid Employment Judges and we have four new appointees, they are Gareth Duncan, Rhys Evans, Nick Webb and Gemma Cawthray. They had been due to be inducted around now but that has been delayed because of the pandemic. We hope that that may be able to take place in the autumn and once they are inducted and ready to start that will bring our total number of fee paid Judges up to 11.

32. We of course appointed new non-legal members at the beginning of the year and we have 13 new appointees in Wales, all of them have been inducted and some of them have started sitting on hearings but I’m afraid that stopped pretty soon because they started to sit just before the pandemic hit, but with their inclusion it brings our overall numbers up to about 48. I’m pleased to say that

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some of our very experienced members who would have been due to be retiring this year are going to be subject to a request for an application for them to be able to sit past the usual retirement age with an extension of 1 year, so that’s being sought in respect of those members that fall into that category, so that does boost our numbers somewhat. Listing

33. If you have a case that was postponed because of pandemic I want you to be aware that we have stopped listing newly received cases into the usual autumn slots that we would have been putting them in in order to try and make a space for cases that have been postponed because of COVID. What we’re trying to avoid is a situation where those postponed cases go to the back of the queue. There are some gaps in the list opening up in July and August where we are postponing longer hearings and you may be contacted to see whether some of the shorter hearings could be slotted in over the summer period. All of these listings are provisional because we need to keep everything under review and see what the Government Guidance is and then to assess nearer the time whether we’re able to go ahead and in what format.

34. In terms of new cases we expect an increase, because of redundancy issues and claims related to furlough and we are starting to see some pandemic and furlough related claims coming through.

Request for Help / positives

35. So I wanted to conclude with a request please in terms of how you may be able to help to keep things moving through Wales ET. One of the success stories as I mentioned with being in lockdown is remote Judicial Mediation. It seems to work well for everybody to do that by phone or by video and I would encourage you to consider whether mediation is suitable in the cases that you have before you.

36. We have been taking feedback from participants in video hearings of all types, so Judges, members, users, professional representatives and parties and an interesting theme is that litigants in person are reporting on the whole that they feel less anxious when they are able to connect to hearings from their home environment and that’s been particularly helpful to some Claimants who have identified that they have mental health issues, so that is one positive.

37. Another positive from the Judges is that they feel that they are getting more by

having the visual cues during a hearing and they are able to spot when a party isn’t following things so it’s really helped them in having an efficient and effective hearing and helping the parties to understand what they need to do.

38. Something to consider is, do you have an issue that could perhaps be dealt with on the papers? For example a costs application, your thoughts on that could be discussed with the other side to see whether you can make an agreed proposal to the Tribunal.

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39. On the point of settlement, a plea that if at all possible, to settle in advance of the hearing. I appreciate that last minute settlements are the norm in the Tribunal, but they do cause us some headaches with regard to listing and use of rooms. We are going to have very limited venue space and we are going to be competing with other jurisdictions so if there is a chance of making efforts to settle in advance, please use our colleagues at ACAS and do so in advance of the hearing.

40. All of the hearings that we are going to be listing during the coming months are going to require a lot of planning, whether that’s remote, hybrid, in person the parties are going to have to try to co-operate with each other to think about how they are going to manage the hearing depending on the platform that’s going to be used. Timetabling is going to be really important, social distancing, who needs to be in the room, who’s going to come and support, is that going to be possible, getting your witnesses to test their connections to video hearings in advance, all of these are factors that will really help us to start a hearing on time, avoid delay and deal with things efficiently. On that note I’m very grateful to many of the participants today who did dial in in advance and spoke to Simon Griffiths our clerk to make sure you could connect.

41. Another thing to think about is whether you can narrow the issues, or agree facts

42. With regard to bundles, can we think about what is really necessary for the Tribunal to see. Bundles are an issue that are going to be quite difficult for the Tribunal. We will be getting used to e-bundles for the first time if they are going to be used with any regularity and it is more difficult when you’re not used to it to locate things on a screen. The issue with paper bundles is if you’re in person each individual person needs their own copy and of course that’s a very labour intensive task for anyone who is having to provide them, so really thinking about the bundle size is very important.

43. So that’s my update, thank you very much for attending today, and thank you for your patience, please do bear with us, we will keep things under review and we’ll try to communicate with you as things change over time.

44. I’m going to hand over now I hope to Daniela Mahapatra who is going to speak to us about the ELIPS ELA Scheme which had been running in Cardiff Mags as an in person drop in clinic and the plans to move it online, so Daniela can I check if you’re on the line and can speak to us about that please? Daniela Mahapatra ELIPS

45. Good afternoon everybody.

46. We have been working behind the scenes on trying to set up an online ELIPS clinic. As you know the social distancing measures are going to be quite tricky to maintain in an in person ELIPS clinic and we know that lots of people are going to need help over the coming months just as they have in the last 3 or 4 years when we’ve been running the scheme and so with the pro bono committee from the Employment Lawyers Association we are trying to work

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out a way of still providing some service but perhaps online to keep our volunteers safe and to keep providing a service to those parties who can’t afford legal advice.

47. So the idea is that we’ll have a clinic fortnightly, but it will be run by volunteers

from all around the country from the 4 areas where there are currently ELIPS clinics, so Birmingham, Bristol, London Central and Cardiff. We’re going to break it down into half day slots, so there’ll be 3 sessions in the morning, 3 sessions in the afternoon and we’d like 2 volunteers per day or 4 volunteers if you want to split them so that you just do a morning or afternoon, so we will run 12 clinics a day - 12 x 1 hour slots.

48. What we want is for people to sign up saying that they might be interested in that. It won’t involve any advocacy, it’s going to be on days when the litigants don’t have a court hearing, we can’t quite match all that up at the moment, but hopefully in time we’ll be able to provide assistance for hearings too, if we need to keep the social distancing measures going into the future.

49. So it’ll be a very straightforward service where you’ll dial in from anywhere, it’ll

be on a platform like this and you’ll have a 40 minute slot with a litigant in person who needs help and then you’ll have 20 minutes to write it up and then you’ll move on to your next client. The idea is you’ll see 3 in 3 hours over a morning and again over the afternoon or as I said you can volunteer for just half a day.

50. So if you are interested in that we’d be absolutely delighted to hear from you. It’ll be really good just to keep going with some connection with litigation during this time if you’re quiet and if you’re not quiet hopefully it’ll just be a nice thing to do and I think while you’re working from home it’s an ideal opportunity to try and fit in some pro bono work around your other paid work.

51. As always there’ll be support from the ELA, there’ll be resources, we get free access to PLC.

52. It will also be very light touch so you won’t have papers in advance, it will be

an on the day scheme, there’ll be no preparation and there will just be a requirement to write up your advice and save the note on the system.

53. If there’s any information you want or any further discussion outside of this meeting, please let me know. You can find me on the ELA website but you can also find me on Twitter and via my NHS email hopefully I’ll hear from some of you.

54. SD – Thank you Daniela, and I just wanted to say, everybody Wales Employment Tribunal is really grateful to the volunteers who work on the ELIPS Scheme, so I hope that you’re encouraged to continue with that assistance albeit online instead.

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Mel Hourihane Wales ET Delivery Manager Staffing

55. Considerations during the pandemic have been around the health, safety and

wellbeing of our staff first and foremost who have worked tirelessly and with a smile throughout this pandemic. We have 3 x staff members working remotely from home due to the pandemic and have staff on a rota in the office to ensure that social contact is reduced and only core work functions have been focused on. This means that some work functions have not been worked on for many months and recovery in some of this is likely to be slow. The team have demonstrated great team spirit throughout the pandemic where the office has remained open throughout and staff had had to adapt to the new environment and new desks in some cases to ensure we adhere to social distancing. The ET Admin office in Cardiff Magistrates is very small so it has been a challenge and some staff are currently working in hearing rooms to ensure the social distancing parameters are achieved.

56. We are working to an allocation of 18.25 and are currently at 16.17. Staffing

levels are static, although we will be looking to recruit additional staff to ensure we reach our allocation. Discussions regarding this are ongoing.

57. Due to the pandemic, we have been unable to undertake overtime which we

had been using for many months prior to this to supplement the deficiency in staffing numbers. Once the crisis is over, we anticipate undertaking overtime on a regular basis over a long period. We are also hopeful that our staffing allocation for this financial year will increase, given the backlog and expected spike in workload due to the pandemic.

Performance

58. Overall, for the last financial year, we were only one of a few offices that

achieved the 5-day KM1 target of receiving and serving ET1s. To this end, myself and Leanna were asked to attend a workshop in London a few months ago to share our working practice/processes with other ET offices to assist with their performance.

59. We worked hard on our other Key Performance Measures and on average

placed around the middle of the table in comparison to other ET regions.

60. We are receiving around 125 single claims per month and our current live load stands at 945 cases. We are dealing with the backlog as a priority, however the backlog continues to impact upon our ability to clear cases. Given the pandemic, we find ourselves in a backlog of around 18 weeks with correspondence and listing work.

61. The team have managed to keep on top of the urgent/priority work so that case

management via TPHs have continued and the new CVP platform has been trialled. They are also working on listing cases postponed due to the pandemic from the end of March and listing these after September.

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Risk Assessment

62. We have undertaken a Risk Assessment with approval from the TU as part of

the whole of Cardiff Magistrates’ Courts and have ensured that social distancing measures have been put in place in the public, staffing and judicial areas. This is a live document that will be reviewed weekly or when concerns are raised by staff or other users as a result of a potential incident and will continue to be revisited as usage of the building changes and increases.

63. Upon entering the building, space markers will be on the floor for queuing prior

to admittance to the building and users will be asked to enter the building to ensure people do not enter until they are called forward.

64. To ensure we follow the latest NHS guidelines on checking for symptoms for

COVID-19, all court users will be asked to confirm that they do not have any symptoms of coronavirus in line with PH guidelines. If any appears to have, or discloses that they have, symptoms consistent with COVID-19, they will be refused entry to the building by Court Security Officers.

65. To reduce physical contact, there will be a ‘hands off’ approach to bag

searches and if bags/items need to be touched, protective gloves will be worn and hand sanitizer used by the Court Security Officers.

66. 2m square boxes with hazard tape have been marked on the floor inside the

main entrance and throughout the public side of the building.

67. A one-way system has been implemented from the entrance to the building, around levels 2 & 3 of the public side of the building and back out through the exit.

68. A one-in, one-out, system is in place for lift entry and exit and also for the

toilets.

69. On Floor 3, visual markers are in place. These include hazard tape highlighting the 2m distancing, posters emphasising maximum occupancy in the consultation rooms and posters displayed around the building and in the hearing rooms serving as a reminder about the importance of adhering to social distancing. We will also have a Perspex screen installed and fixed at the ET reception area.

70. To maintain social distancing in corridors and waiting areas, tribunal users are

to only enter or exit courtrooms when instructed to do so to avoid cross-traffic in doorways and to ensure a safe number of people are in the hearing rooms. A selected number of seats in seating areas have been taped off or removed from the hearing rooms to maintain 2m separation.

71. As Regional Employment Judge Sian Davies has eluded to, we are planning

initially on running one hearing room once hearings re-commence on 29 June, but this will be reviewed weekly and myself and the Listing Team will be liaising with the Delivery Manager in Cardiff Magistrates’ Court to establish the footfall

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into this building and when expected peaks are likely. We are writing to parties to establish how many people will be attending in-person hearings which will help us make informed decisions on which hearing room to use and assist with the overall picture for the building.

72. In addition to social distancing, other measures in place include hand sanitizer

in the hearing rooms, bottled water provided where required and oath cards/holy books not being shared. Courts users who have any concerns about local measures should notify an onsite member of staff.

73. Plans are being made for us to potentially use a Room over in Eastgate House

who hold SSCS tribunals and this also offers video capability.

74. We have managed to secure the exclusive use of Court 7 to use temporarily once in-person hearings re-commence which means we no longer have to share Floor 3 with Crime. Although a smaller court with an occupancy of 5 people, this is a real benefit due to the video facilities available there and will provide more agility and flexibility going forward, particularly around CVP hearings that are up and running and will increase.

75. Hopefully and swiftly, we want to increase and run two hearing rooms in

addition to CVP hearings as well as hybrid hearings which are part in-person and part remote. Discussions are ongoing around the provision of additional video screens and cameras to allow this to take place and to enable them to be public hearings. Courts 8, 9 and 10 are larger hearing rooms and have a maximum occupancy of 9 people in line with the social distancing parameters.

76. We are also looking at starting to use BT Meet Me rather than Loop-Up for our

TPHs as this offers the facility to record hearings.

77. Initially we were receiving many telephone calls from parties, as is to be expected, but these have reduced, more than likely due to the ET FAQ document that the President, Barry Clarke produced and continues to review and update as this fluid situation continues. Phone lines are currently open until 4pm rather than 5pm, a decision that was taken locally which assisted in relieving the pressure on reduced staffing numbers and enabled staff to leave the office at staggered times to avoid public transport during the pandemic.

78. It is important to note that despite this pandemic, we have very few complaints

in ET, with only around 3-4 in the last 6 months.

Updates

79. On 22 June 2020, we will test a new case management system, a common platform called ECM (Employment Case Management), used by other jurisdictions within HMCTS known as CCD. This will replace the unstable ETHOS system which has been around for almost 20 years. Staff will require training in this new system and bedding in will take place. The advantage of using this system is that it is much more stable and can be worked on remotely unlike ETHOS, so offers more scope to enable staff to work from home.

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Reform/Digitalisation

80. HMCTS is undergoing reform and some of the plans for digitalisation have been moved forward since the pandemic, including the use of IT platforms such as CVP. Our staff are one of only 2 offices nationally to pilot using CVP and one of our staff members, Leanna Conradson, hosted training sessions not only for the team in Wales ET, but also for all the other ET regions and the Property Office and produced guides for staff and the judiciary which received national approval.

81. Staff were having meetings called ‘One Conversation’ which provided an

update to staff regarding the Reform plans. ET is still part of this, although plans may well have slipped due to the pandemic, but reform will eventually have a big impact and affect the way we currently work.

General

82. Given the fluidity of the situation, reviews will be taking place and we will do

our best to update you as much as possible. I’d like to ask that you bear with us as much as possible as we are learning new things as we go along and have been encountering unexpected issues. As you’re aware, matters can change rapidly, so we ask for your understanding.

83. We have a Reward and Recognition Policy in place to reward staff who have

gone over and above what is required/expected of them. If you do feel as though you have examples of this, please feel free to e-mail me these examples and they can be considered by the panel as to whether they deserve a financial incentive. Thank you very much and we appreciate all your support.

84. SD – Thank you very much Mel and I just wanted to add to that, thank you to

you and also to Leanna and all the staff, you really have been fantastic during the pandemic, have been working consistently and really have made a huge difference in Wales ET, so thank you.

Gareth Petty ACAS

85. Sian before I start I just wanted to say from a personal perspective a huge

congratulations to yourself and to Barry. It’s richly deserved and obviously we’ll continue the excellent working relationship we have with yourselves

86. It’s good to see so many people on the call. I don’t think I’ve seen so many

people in the user group meeting, so it’s really good and lots of new faces and new names and some more familiar faces, so a really good mix and welcome to you all and thanks for joining us.

87. Just an update from an ACAS perspective, like the Tribunal service it’s been a

really busy time. I think the first few weeks of the pandemic it was all about giving advice and we normally take between 3 and 4,000 calls a day during a normal period and during the first few weeks of the pandemic we were taking up to 15,000 calls a day. So it was extremely busy and it was very much all

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hands on deck and it’s been quieter since the furlough was introduced etc. and bedded in and now we’re planning for the next onslaught.

88. In the last 3 to 4 weeks or slightly longer, we’ve been planning how to scale

our individual dispute resolution service which is conciliation, to meet the expected peaks in demand and we’ve already experienced an increase in notifications and requests for our help regarding redundancy and restructuring. I think that’s something that’s going to face us all, it’s just a matter of timing really. I think timing wise we’re trying to, really quickly, we are doing all we can from the ACAS perspective we are trying to learn from the experience we had when fees were removed and the impact that had on our conciliation service, so we’ve got a little more time for planning for this.

89. We considered two options as to dealing with the increase in demand. The first

option was not to offer conciliation at all on certain cases, that was option A and option B was to move cases to a holding area and to offer a limited reactive conciliation. So we were involved in discussions with our ACAS Counsel and BEIS (our parent department). Both sides felt they weren’t able to support plan A because that would in effect lead to us not fulfilling our statutory duty which is to conciliate in cases before Tribunal. So we opted for plan B which will involve triage, reactive systems, so looking at individual cases and really those cases that for example are represented by legal reps on both sides. We probably wouldn’t treat those as urgently as non-rep’d cases. Similarly, where there are cases involving large organisations who rarely settle anyway. So those would be triaged but wouldn’t be a priority in terms of dealing with the mainstream of cases.

90. We’ve managed to secure a further £2 million budget for individual conciliation

service, £1 million of that is a permanent increase to deal with the ongoing number of cases and the second million is to deal with COVID related issues and we are going on a significant recruitment campaign now. What we’ve started already is we’ve moved some of our staff throughout ACAS, you’re probably aware we have a commercial arm which is going out and doing workshops, training courses, etc. There is currently no face to face training but we are starting training on different platforms now, but the staff who were not involved on that side they are being trained and transferred over onto conciliation and taking a conciliation role. In Wales we’ve downsized in the last 2 months/3 months, doubled the size of our Grade 10 conciliation, Early Conciliation Team and those are the sort of cases that deal with wages, holiday pay, etc.

91. We have a National advert for 20 new Grade 9 Conciliation staff and those are

the staff who deal with the full range of conciliation cases from wages up to discrimination cases and that is running from 1 June to 22 June. We’ve got a further advert going in mid-way through the month now for a further 20 Grade 10’s nationally as well, so if you are considering working for ACAS now is the time to apply.

92. In terms of logistics the majority of our conciliators are working from home

anyway and so for the majority of them it’s as you were. We had to evacuate

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Companies House at short notice so that seemed to go really well and that to do with the resilience of the staff.

93. In the last 12 months we haven’t really given the level of service we would like

to be doing but we are getting there and doing all we can. If there are any issues with the service that you’re getting then please let me know. My contact details are available through the ET.

94. SD – Thank you very much Gareth. I’ve been looking through the chat, I don’t

think there are particular questions in the chat function but I know that a lot of the responses have been aimed at Daniela with regard to the ELIPS clinic so I’m really encouraged to see that and thank you for those of you who are wanting to volunteer.

95. SD - I have had one question in advance that I would like to deal with from

Hannah Belton, so thank you for your question Hannah. You wanted to raise the issue of gender neutral terminology in correspondence with the Tribunal and Hannah says that for the last nine months or so she has been addressing her correspondence “Dear Tribunal” instead of “Dear Sirs” and she wants my views on that and whether or not further work can be done in the Tribunal in respect of that issue. So Hannah I don’t know whether you will have noticed but in the invitation for this meeting I addressed the letter ‘DearTribunal users’ because it is an issue that’s on my radar. I would like us to be using language that is more inclusive, and it is definitely something that is of importance. I’m going to make some more enquiries about what could be done in terms of standard correspondence but I hope if you see correspondence from me that it will be in inclusive terms, but it’s harder to change dcouments agreed on a national level in a large organisation, but certainly within Wales that is something that I would like to look at.

96. Now I’m really conscious that I said we would finish at 4pm and it’s 3 minutes

to 4pm. I don’t think that there are further questions, but I just wonder whether there are any of the Employment Judges who have joined us today that want to add anything and perhaps if they do they could write in the chat function and that Leanna could unmute them. I know we have Judge Brace, Judge Harfield, Judge Moore and Judge Ryan.

97. Judge Brace (RB) – One thing the Tribunal staff have been working really hard

as you’ve pointed out Judge Davies over the pandemic and they’re dealing with an awful lot of correspondence that’s coming through and one thing I’ve noted with the Preliminary Hearings that we’re dealing with, parties understandably are sending things in just in advance of the Preliminary Hearings, Agendas for example, and what we’re finding is if they are being sent in in less than say 24 hours in advance of the Preliminary Hearing they are not finding their way to the file and that can be problematic for the parties and can cause a delay while we try and look for them. I appreciate everybody’s working under difficult conditions, just to say don’t assume that the Agenda if it’s sent in late or any applications that are sent in late are going to be before the Judge and if they can be sent in well in advance that would be helpful.

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98. SD – That’s a very good point, thank you. You know the staff are working in reduced numbers and monitoring the email traffic coming in the inbox is not always something that they can prioritise because of all the other calls on their time, not least clerking video hearings which is time consuming. Are there any of the other Judges wanting to raise anything? (no)

99. So I’m going to bring the meeting to a close then. I’m really grateful that you’ve

joined us today on this platform. What I’m intending to do is to send out a short survey to everybody who has attended to get your views on how you would like us to conduct user group meetings going forward and your experience of using this platform, so you should be hearing from us within a few days with that, but thank you very much for your attendance. Good bye.

4pm - end