Presidential Guidance (Employment tribunals: Recording of hearings and transcription of recordings)
| Jurisdiction | UK Non-devolved |
| Year | 2024 |
| Court | Employment Tribunal |
Practice - Employment tribunals - Recording of hearings and transcription of recordings - Making of audio recordings where technical facility to do so exists and recordings can be securely retained - Malfunctions - Prohibition on making recordings without permission - Access to recordings - Requests for transcripts - Misuse of transcripts
1 In this presidential guidance, the following terms have the same meaning as given in our accompanying Practice Direction (Employment tribunals: Recording of hearings and transcription of recordings) [
2 Rule 7 of the ET Rules allows the Presidents to publish guidance as to matters of practice and as to how the powers conferred by the ET Rules may be exercised. Such guidance must be published in an appropriate manner to bring it to the attention of claimants, respondents and their advisers. This guidance concerns the recording of employment tribunal hearings and the transcription of such recordings. Employment tribunals must have regard to this guidance, but they are not bound by it.
Recording and transcription generally3 The employment tribunals north and south of the border are provided with administrative support by HMCTS. Provision of recording equipment and a system for transcribing recordings is the responsibility of HMCTS.
4 By our accompanying practice direction, with the agreement of HMCTS (but subject to para 5 below), audio recordings will henceforth be made of all employment tribunal hearings. This is so whether they are preliminary hearings or full hearings, or hearings for case management, remedy, costs (expenses in Scotland) or reconsideration, and whether they are held in public or private, and whether they are held in person or remotely (or a hybrid combination). There are only two exceptions: hearings held under rules 3 and 53(1)(e) of the ET Rules (i e for the purposes of judicial mediation and other alternative dispute resolution) and hearings where there is an order in place under rule 94 (i e in the interests of national security).
5 As our practice direction states, HMCTS will only make audio recordings where the technical facility exists to do so and where the recording can be securely retained. More particularly:
5.1 Hearings held in person can only be recorded where suitable equipment is installed in hearing rooms. Audio recordings of in-person hearings can only be transcribed properly where there is a suitable array of microphones capable of identifying different speakers at the main locations in the room (being, at a minimum, the bench, the tables used by each representative, and the witness table).
5.2 There are some employment tribunal venues in England and Wales where, because of co-location with court jurisdictions, the employment tribunals can use courtrooms with an existing digital audio recording system installed (and which will be used if available)
5.3 Where an existing digital audio recording system is installed, functioning, and available to be used by the employment tribunals, and trained HMCTS staff are on hand to operate it, it should be used.
5.4 However, most hearing rooms used by the employment tribunals have no formal recording equipment installed. It can be possible to “join” a Cloud Video Platform (“CVP”) room to an in-person hearing to act as a proxy recording device, but only where sufficient microphones are available and there is an accompanying screen and camera. HMCTS have agreed to investigate adopting this approach nationally and to investigate other recording alternatives to give full effect to our practice direction.
5.5 HMCTS has agreed to record...
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