Employment and settlement agreement solicitors in Edinburgh

In Edinburgh the employment tribunal and the Employment Appeal Tribunal sit on the same street — and yet the first-instance tribunal’s listed address for correspondence is in Glasgow.

Where a Edinburgh claim is heard

The Edinburgh numbers

How busy the tribunal is

The appeal tribunal is next door

In Edinburgh the first-instance employment tribunal and the Employment Appeal Tribunal sit on the same street. HMCTS lists the tribunal at 54-56 Melville Street and the appeal tribunal at number 52.

That proximity invites a misunderstanding worth clearing up before anyone prices a settlement around it. The appeal tribunal does not rehear a case. Its jurisdiction is set out in one short provision.

Any question of law. Not a disagreement with how the tribunal saw the evidence, not a sense that the witnesses were believed the wrong way round — a legal error. So in practice the first-instance hearing is where a case is won or lost, and that is the alternative a settlement offer is really priced against. An appeal is not a second go at the facts, and nobody sensible should factor one in as though it were.

You attend in Edinburgh, and you write to Glasgow

The HMCTS listing for the Edinburgh Employment Tribunal gives two different addresses: the hearing venue on Melville Street, and a separate address for correspondence at the Glasgow Tribunals Centre on York Street. The appeal tribunal, for its part, lists its administration office at George House on George Street rather than at the Melville Street hearing rooms.

This is administrative, and it bites in exactly one situation: a deadline. Employment time limits are short and applied strictly. If something has to reach the tribunal by a date, check which address it has to reach before posting it, and use the electronic route where there is one. The venue is listed as open 9am to 4pm, so the afternoon of a last day is shorter than people expect.

The listing also records parking, which is uncommon among the venues on this site, alongside refreshments, first aid and a security arch.

Edinburgh pay sits above the cap, and above Scotland

The median full-time job located in the City of Edinburgh pays more than the statutory weekly cap — by roughly a tenth of a week’s pay — so the statutory redundancy formula trims a typical Edinburgh wage before it starts. It also sits above the Scottish median, and above Glasgow.

Two things follow for anyone looking for an employment solicitor in Edinburgh to look at a settlement. The statutory figure is a floor, and a weaker description of an Edinburgh loss than of a typical Scottish one. And the gap between what Edinburgh jobs pay and what Edinburgh residents earn is small, so whichever of the two figures you use to describe your loss gives much the same answer.

The £30,000 tax threshold, being flat, covers fewer months of Edinburgh pay than it does at the Scottish median. That is worth modelling before agreeing a headline figure. How the threshold works.

Scotland is a separate legal system with the same employment rights, so the statutory sign-off can be done by any insured, unconnected qualified lawyer; anything that goes further wants someone who practises Scots law. What differs in Scotland, with the instruments named · who pays for the advice.

Common questions about Edinburgh