Employment tribunal costs orders: when claimants are ordered to pay
A data-backed look at costs orders against claimants in published UK employment tribunal judgments, including how rare they are and the amounts that appear in recent cases.
Costs are not the normal penalty for losing a tribunal claim. They become an issue in the harder-edged cases: weak claims pursued after warnings, unreasonable conduct, vexatious litigation, or a separate costs application after the main judgment.
On this page
Costs patterns
106
respondent-win wording
Respondent wins
5.0%
of 2,124 cases
Largest order
£20,000
explicit amount
Avg order
£3,421.89
top 9 examples
What is an employment tribunal costs order?
In most employment tribunal cases, the losing side does not automatically pay the other side's legal costs. An employment tribunal costs order is the exception: the tribunal directs one side to contribute to the other side's costs, often after a separate costs application or costs judgment.
On this page, the focus is the scenario most people worry about: the claimant being ordered to pay the respondent's costs. That is why the underlying dataset filters to respondent-successful judgments and then looks for costs-order wording.
When can an employment tribunal make a costs order?
Published judgments usually point to the same small cluster of reasons. A costs order against a claimant tends to appear where the tribunal says the claim, application, or conduct crossed a line rather than simply failed.
- The tribunal says the claimant acted unreasonably during the proceedings.
- The case was pursued after warnings that it was weak or had little realistic prospect of success.
- The conduct is described as vexatious, abusive, disruptive, or otherwise exceptional.
- A separate costs application is heard after the main liability judgment.
That lines up with the wider procedural patterns on why claims get struck out or fail procedurally, especially weak-case and unreasonable-conduct scenarios.
How common are employment tribunal costs orders?
In the currently indexed public dataset, Tribunal Intel identifies 106 respondent-win judgments with costs-order wording.
That is roughly 5.0% of the 2,124 respondent-successful published cases currently visible through the app, which reinforces the usual practical point: costs orders exist, but they are still the exception rather than the default outcome.
If you want the plain-English definition behind that risk, see the glossary entry for costs orders.
How large can an employment tribunal costs order be?
The largest explicit costs order currently surfaced on Tribunal Intel is £20,000.
Across the top 9 visible examples, the average explicit amount is £3,421.89.
The distribution is lumpy. A handful of large orders can pull the average upward, so the top-line risk is real without being typical of every costs application that appears in a published judgment.
Published employment tribunal costs order examples
These are the largest visible claimant-to-respondent costs orders currently surfaced in the dataset.
£20,000
£2,000
£1,750
£1,500
£1,500
£1,397
£1,358
£1,250
£42
Related reading
- Why employment tribunal claims get struck out or dismissed for the procedural patterns that often sit upstream of costs risk.
- Glossary: costs order for a shorter plain-English definition.
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