What Is the Tribunal Risk on the Dismissal You Are Planning?
This free tribunal risk calculator asks eight questions about a dismissal you are planning and gives you a risk rating — low, medium or high — plus an estimated financial exposure figure. Built by CIPD-qualified HR consultants for North West employers and updated for the Employment Rights Act 2025 changes landing between now and January 2027.
Check Your Risk NowWhy Check Tribunal Risk Before You Dismiss?
By the time a tribunal claim arrives, you are defending the record you actually made — not the one you meant to make. The letters are written, the meetings happened or they did not, and hindsight fixes neither. Checking the risk before you act costs a couple of minutes and changes what you do next: which steps to slow down, what to put in writing, whether to take advice before the meeting rather than after the claim.
Timing matters more this year than most. The Employment Rights Act 2025 doubles the tribunal claim window for anything that happens on or after 1 October 2026, and cuts the unfair dismissal qualifying period from two years to six months on 1 January 2027. For a North West employer, a dismissal that carries little legal risk today can carry a great deal on the same facts in six months' time. Our step-by-step guide to how to dismiss an employee fairly walks the full process; this tribunal risk calculator tells you where the one you are planning stands.
One thing this calculator is not for: outmanoeuvring the person you are dismissing. In the losing cases we are brought into across the North West, the problem is rarely the decision — it is a defensible decision carried out with no investigation, no hearing and nothing in writing. A process the employee recognises as fair is the right way to treat people, and it is also — not coincidentally — the strongest position an employer can be in.
Tribunal Risk Calculator
Free Tool
Eight questions about the dismissal you are planning
How We Calculate Your Tribunal Risk
No black box. The eight questions map to the eight things that decide real unfair dismissal cases — the same ground a tribunal would walk an employer through, in roughly the same order. The precise weighting is ours; what each question measures is set out here.
- 01A fair reason. The law recognises five potentially fair reasons to dismiss: conduct, capability, redundancy, statutory illegality and ‘some other substantial reason’. No fair reason, no defence — this question carries the most weight.
- 02Process followed. Investigation, a written invitation, a hearing the employee could prepare for, the right to be accompanied, an appeal. A dismissal can be fair in substance and still unfair in procedure — skipped steps are how employers with a good reason lose.
- 03Documentation. If it is not written down, you will struggle to prove it happened. Contemporaneous notes, warning letters and meeting minutes are what a tribunal weighs; memories are not.
- 04Consistency. How you treated the last person who did the same thing. Employers get caught by their own history here: different outcomes for similar cases need a documented reason, or they look arbitrary — and arbitrary looks unfair.
- 05Protected characteristics. Where age, disability, pregnancy, race, sex or another protected characteristic sits anywhere near the facts, the potential cost changes completely: discrimination compensation is uncapped, and injury-to-feelings awards alone run from £1,300 to beyond £62,900 under the 2026/27 Vento bands.
- 06Length of service. Under two years’ service currently rules out an ordinary unfair dismissal claim — though not an automatically unfair or discrimination claim — and only until 1 January 2027, when the ERA 2025 cuts the qualifying period to six months. Anyone you hired before 1 July 2026 will already qualify the day the change lands.
- 07Acas Code compliance. For misconduct and performance dismissals, an unreasonable failure to follow the Acas Code can add up to 25% to any award a tribunal makes.
- 08Settlement consideration. Whether an exit by agreement has been properly weighed. Sometimes a fair, respectful settlement serves the employer and the employee better than a process nobody enjoys — never considering it is itself a risk signal.
The exposure figure is anchored to this year’s published numbers, not plucked from the air: the compensatory award cap of £123,543 — or 52 weeks’ gross pay if lower — for dismissals from 6 April 2026, a cap the Employment Rights Act 2025 removes entirely from 1 January 2027; a week’s pay capped at £751 with a maximum basic award of £22,530; and the latest published tribunal outcomes, where the average unfair dismissal award was £13,749 and the median £6,746.
A worked floor from those figures: defend an ordinary claim to a hearing, lose at the median, and you are out £6,746 in compensation plus £10,000 or more in your own legal fees — roughly £17,000 before you count the management time. Win, and the fees mostly stay yours anyway: tribunals ordered costs just 192 times across all claims in 2023/24, at a median of £3,000.
What comes out is an estimate built from published statutory rates and national statistics, not a prediction about your case. Your rating and headline figure appear on screen as soon as you answer the last question; the email address is only needed if you want the full written breakdown sent to you.
What Your Risk Rating Means
Low.
The building blocks are in place: a fair reason, a followed process, a paper trail, consistent treatment. Low is not zero — keep minutes at every stage, offer the appeal, and sense-check the final letter before it goes. Our guide to running a disciplinary procedure covers the meeting-by-meeting detail.
Medium.
Usually the right decision with gaps around it — a missing investigation note, an inconsistent precedent, an appeal you had not planned to offer. This is the fixable band: close the gaps before you dismiss, not after. A week’s pause to do it properly is cheaper than any hearing. If the employee is new, read our guide to dismissal during probation — the rules shift on 1 January 2027 and the safe window is shorter than most employers think.
High.
Something structural: no clear fair reason yet, a protected characteristic close to the facts, a process that has not really started, or an Acas Code failure already baked in. Do not send the letter. A high rating usually means the honest options are to restart the process properly or to explore a fair exit by agreement — our guide to settlement agreements for employers explains how to open that conversation without creating new claims. Either way, take advice before the next irreversible step: that is what our employment law advice for North West employers is for.
Whatever the band, the aim is the same. You are not trying to beat the employee; you are trying to run a process both of you could defend to a stranger. Tribunals reward exactly that — and so does the rest of your team, who watch how leavers are treated. Bear in mind the tribunal claim window doubles to six months for acts from 1 October 2026: process gaps now have a longer shelf life.
Frequently Asked Questions
Budget £10,000 upwards in legal fees to defend a claim to a full hearing — money that is usually gone win or lose, because tribunals rarely order the losing side to pay the winner’s costs. Lose, and the award comes on top: unfair dismissal awards averaged £13,749 in the latest published figures. Then add the hidden line — weeks of management time on statements, disclosure and the hearing itself.
Yes, in specific situations. Automatically unfair reasons — pregnancy or maternity, whistleblowing, health and safety, asserting a statutory right — need no qualifying service, and neither do discrimination claims. From 1 January 2027 the Employment Rights Act 2025 cuts the ordinary qualifying period from two years to six months, and anyone hired before 1 July 2026 qualifies the day it lands. Statutory notice can even carry a dismissal decided at five and a half months past that line.
Three months less one day from the dismissal for most claims today, with the clock paused while Acas early conciliation runs. For acts on or after 1 October 2026, the Employment Rights Act 2025 doubles the window to six months. In practice, an employer’s process gap this autumn can surface as a claim well into 2027.
£13,749 on average in 2023/24, the latest published Ministry of Justice figures; the median was £6,746 and the highest £179,124. Awards are currently capped at the lower of £123,543 or 52 weeks’ gross pay — a cap that disappears for dismissals from 1 January 2027. Discrimination awards have no cap at all.
Yes — twice over. The Acas Code is the yardstick tribunals use to judge whether a misconduct or performance dismissal was handled fairly, and an unreasonable failure to follow it can add up to 25% to any award. It cuts both ways: an employee who unreasonably ignores it can see their award reduced by up to 25% too.
It is an evidence-anchored screening tool, not legal advice. The questions mirror what tribunals examine and the figures come from published statutory rates and national statistics, but no calculator can weigh the facts of your case — one conversation about the detail can move a rating in either direction. Treat the result as your starting point, and take advice before anything irreversible.
Turn Your Rating Into a Plan
Book a free 30-minute consultation with a CIPD-qualified consultant. Bring your rating and tell us what you are planning — we will tell you what is driving the risk, what would bring it down, and honestly, whether you need us at all. Dismissing this week? Say so when you get in touch: urgent situations get a same-day response.
Written and reviewed by Samantha Boyle MCIPD. Last reviewed: 20 July 2026.
Serving employers across the North West: Bolton, Manchester, Salford, Stockport, Wigan, Warrington, Bury, Rochdale, Preston, Lancaster and Chester.