In this section
Forms & Guidance
How to appeal
This page describes how to appeal against an Employment Tribunal judgment, decision, direction or order. Information on how to appeal can also be found in:
- The Employment Tribunal booklet 'The Judgment'
(119kb). - Sections 2 and 3 of the Employment Appeal Tribunal Practice Direction
The form to use for an appeal may be found here: EAT Form 1 (78kb).
You can only appeal on a point of law - you must identify flaws in the legal reasoning of the original decision. The EAT will not normally re-examine issues of fact.
The 'Practice direction' contains important information about what will happen, and what parties need to do, at each stage of an appeal.
You can only appeal on a point of law, you must identify flaws in the legal reasoning of the original decision. The EAT will not normally re-examine issues based on fact.
Forms and other guidance on how to appeal can be found on the forms, leaflets and guidance page of this site.
On this page there are sections about:
Time Limits
Time limits are strictly enforced in the EAT.
The usual rule is that your appeal must be received complete by the EAT no later than 16:00 (4pm) on the 42nd day after the date on which the ET sent you the judgment, decision, direction or order.
The 42nd day will be the same day of the week, six weeks later.
The judgment, decision, direction or order is not the same as the reasons. You may need to ask the ET for the reasons, but (unless one of the circumstances below applies) you should not wait until you receive them before sending your appeal, or it may be out of time.
Under these circumstances you may count the 42 days from the date the reasons were sent to you - if:
- you requested written reasons at the Employment Tribunal hearing; or
- you wrote to request written reasons from the Employment Tribunal within 14 days of the date the judgment was sent to you; or
- the Employment Tribunal reserved its reasons and gave them subsequently in writing.
These are the only circumstances where this exception applies. So if, for example, you requested the reasons more than 14 days after the judgment was sent to you, even if your request was granted, then the 42 days must be counted from the date on which the judgment (not the reasons) was sent to you.
The 42 day time limit applies even if remedy has not yet been decided or if you have asked the Employment Tribunal to review its decision (but if your review is successful and you intend to withdraw your appeal, please tell us immediately (see section 15 of the Practice Direction).
If you send your appeal by fax on the day of the deadline, the fax transmission must be complete by 16:00 (4pm) to be in time. The fax machine at EAT is usually very busy in the time leading up to 16:00 (4pm) so you are advised to send your appeal as early as possible.
If you send your appeal by email it must be received by 16:00 (4pm) to be in time. Receipt of emails is not instantaneous, it may take many minutes to arrive.
If we receive your appeal after the deadline then you must make an application for an extension of time. That application cannot be considered until we have received your complete appeal. See paragraphs 3.5 to 3.9 of the Practice Direction.
If the deadline falls on a day on which the EAT office is closed, it is extended to the next working day.
See section 3 of the Practice Direction for more information about time limits.
What you must send us
You must send a fully-completed notice of appeal form to the EAT within the time limit set out above. If you do not use this form you must provide the same information in some other way.
You should also send the following documents. If you omit any which are relevant then you must include an explanation of why you did not send them:
- judgment, decision, direction or order against which you are appealing
- written reasons – if your appeal is against a judgment (or an order which requires written reasons)
- claim (ET1) – which the claimant sent to the Employment Tribunal
- response (ET3) – which the respondent sent to the Employment Tribunal
- application for review – if you have asked the ET for a review (see paragraph 2.2 of the Practice Direction).
There is more information on what you must send us and what you must include in your notice of appeal in Section 2 of the Practice Direction.
How to send your appeal
You must send your appeal to the EAT at one of the addresses on the Contacts page. Do not send it to an Employment Tribunal office, they will send it back to you.
An appeal is only commenced when it is received complete at an EAT office, whatever the method used to deliver it. Time limits are strictly enforced, including the 16:00 (4pm) deadline.
You are strongly advised not to leave the sending or transmission of appeals to the last minute, but to leave enough time to allow for delays, or to correct errors.
If an appeal is sent by either fax or email, it is prudent to check that it has arrived. You may do this immediately after a fax transmission is completed, or 20 minutes after sending an email.
If you use the post you should bear in mind the likelihood of delay or loss and should contact the EAT if you have received no acknowledgment after seven days.
You may lodge an appeal at either EAT office and confirmation of receipt should be sought from the office at which it was lodged (but please note the restricted opening hours in Edinburgh), however subsequent contact should be with the London office for appeals relating to Employment Tribunals in England & Wales or the Edinburgh office for appeals relating to Employment Tribunals in Scotland.
If you use email, the size of any one email, including attachments, must not exceed 2Mb. Attachments must be in a format which can be read by Word 2002, Adobe Reader 8.0 or Windows Picture and Fax Viewer (e.g. .doc, .rtf, .pdf or .jpg). Files may be zipped in a format which can be unzipped by Windows Explorer XP (SP2).
If you intend to deliver your appeal by hand or send it by courier please see the Contacts page for the opening times of EAT offices and the Office Closure Dates page for a list of weekdays on which the EAT offices will be closed. You cannot deliver documents to either office outside the opening hours - for security reasons there is no letter box at either office.
