The claimant had commenced proceedings after a grievance at work, relating to claims of bullying, was dismissed by the employer. She submitted an ET1 and submitted further detail in an email. The REJ requested further information and clarification which was supplied in four further emails. These were accepted as amendments to the original ET1. Over the next few months the claimant sent various unsolicited emails setting out more allegations and in an attempt to clarify the matter two preliminary hearings were held by different judges. After the second of these hearings, the judge decided that including the additional claims and allegations would severely delay the proceedings and overburden both the respondent and the claimant so would not be in the interests of justice.

Mrs Justice Stacey rejected the appeal against this decision at [34] stating that

“The basic principle is that a person bringing a claim must take the responsibility for formulating it. It is their claim, and it is their obligation to articulate it in the ET1 form. The filed claim cannot be changed or altered willy-nilly unless and until permission has been given by the Tribunal to do so. There is no right that can be reserved to a Claimant or indeed a Respondent to provide further amendments or further particulars as and when they wish.”

She also reminds us that just because the proposed amendments were in time, it does not follow that they should be granted. That is only one factor in the decision making and given the ‘extraordinarily messy procedural history’ in this case and the difficulty that the Claimant had in complying with the case management orders, the employment judge was entitled to take a robust view.