Employment Tribunal postponements: when a hearing can be moved and how to ask

The legal test in the 2024 Rules

The procedural rules for Employment Tribunals changed on 6 January 2025, when the Employment Tribunal Procedure Rules 2024 took effect. The change matters for anyone reading older correspondence or guidance: what was rule 30A under the 2013 Rules is now rule 32, and it is rule 32 that a party asking to move a listed hearing is up against.

The structure of the rule is deliberate. An application for a postponement must be received by the tribunal as soon as possible after the need for a postponement becomes known. That is the first obligation, and it sits on the party, not the tribunal. A need that became known three weeks before the application was written is a need that sat unaddressed for three weeks, and the judge will notice.

The rule then hardens for two situations: an application made less than seven days before the hearing begins, and a further application by a party who has already obtained two or more postponements in the same case. In either situation the tribunal may only postpone where all other parties consent (and the postponement is practicable and appropriate for resolving the dispute or otherwise accords with the overriding objective), where the application was necessitated by an act or omission of another party or the tribunal itself, or where there are exceptional circumstances. Exceptional circumstances may include ill health relating to an existing long-term health condition or disability.

Around that specific rule sits the general machinery. The power to postpone is part of the tribunal’s general case management power under rule 30, which is expressly subject to rule 32; a party applies for a case management order at a hearing or by written application under rule 31, and a written applicant must notify the other parties that any objections should be sent to the tribunal as soon as possible. And behind all of it is the overriding objective in rule 3: dealing with cases fairly and justly, which includes ensuring the parties are on an equal footing, avoiding delay so far as compatible with proper consideration of the issues, and saving expense. Parties and their representatives are themselves required to assist the tribunal in furthering that objective.

How to make the application

The GOV.UK guidance sent to parties before a hearing is plain: a request for a postponement must be made in writing as soon as possible, giving full reasons, and a copy must be sent to the other side so that they can tell the tribunal promptly if they object. An employment judge then decides whether a postponement is in the interests of justice, and may want the other side’s views before deciding. The guidance warns parties not to assume a request has been granted; the tribunal will confirm if it has.

That warning deserves to be taken literally. If a party fails to attend or to be represented at a hearing, the tribunal may dismiss the claim or proceed with the hearing in that party’s absence; before doing so it must consider any information available to it, after any practicable enquiries, about the reasons for the absence. An unanswered application is not an adjournment. A litigant who treats silence as consent may find the case decided without them.

The guidance judges actually apply

The Presidential Guidance on seeking a postponement of a hearing was issued for England and Wales on 4 December 2013. It remains in effect. The judiciary’s practice directions page confirms that presidential guidance issued under earlier rules still applies, with references to the 2013 Rules to be read as references to the 2024 Rules using the published conversion table. Tribunals must have regard to the guidance but are not bound by it.

The guidance asks for more than most applicants give. An application should ordinarily be made in writing to the tribunal office, stating the reason for the request and why a postponement would accord with the overriding objective. All relevant documents should be provided. The applicant should, wherever possible, discuss the proposal with the other parties first and tell the tribunal the result; where the hearing date was fixed by agreement, that fact will count. An application that does not meet these requirements will ordinarily not be considered unless there are exceptional circumstances, and the applicant should explain both the failure and the exceptional circumstances relied on.

Where the ground is medical, the guidance is specific about the evidence: the medical material should include a statement from the medical practitioner that in their opinion the applicant is unfit to attend the hearing, the prognosis of the condition, and an indication of when the applicant is likely to be fit to attend. Where a party or witness is unavailable, the tribunal wants the details of the person, the reason for the unavailability, what attempts have been made at alternative arrangements and, for a witness, why their evidence is relevant. Where a representative has withdrawn, the tribunal wants to know when that happened and whether alternative representation is being sought.

Read together, the message of the guidance is that a postponement application is a small piece of evidence-led advocacy, not a diary note. The judge deciding it will not have met the applicant, and a written application may be dealt with on the papers, without a hearing, unless the tribunal orders otherwise. What is not said and evidenced in the application does not exist.

A request that works, and one that fails

The two examples below are illustrative composites, not reports of real cases. They show how the same underlying problem reads to a judge depending on how the application is framed.

Timing and evidence: why late requests fail

The seven-day line in rule 32(3) is the practical centre of gravity. An application made more than seven days before the hearing is a straightforward discretionary application; the same application made inside that window can only be granted on one of the narrower grounds, as can a further application by a party who has already obtained two postponements. A party asking twice is rarely asking from strength. A late, unparticularised request fails not because judges are unsympathetic but because the rule removes the room in which sympathy could operate.

The case law explains the balance the judge is striking. A refusal of a postponement is a case management decision, and an appellate body will be slow to interfere with it; but where the hearing may dispose of the claim, fair trial rights are engaged, and an applicant whose presence is needed for a fair hearing and who cannot attend through no fault of their own will usually have to be granted an adjournment. At the same time, the tribunal is entitled to be satisfied that the inability to attend is genuine, and the onus is on the applicant to prove the need for the postponement. These principles were summarised in Hall v Transport for London and restated in Bennett v London Borough of Islington, which also quotes the Court of Appeal in Teinaz v Wandsworth: “some adjournments must be granted if not to do so amounts to a denial of justice”.

Bennett is the cautionary example. A litigant with a recognised mental health disability lost her volunteer representative to ill health on the morning of the second day of a ten-day hearing. The tribunal refused a renewed postponement application; the Employment Appeal Tribunal held that it had erred. It had failed to weigh the full implications of the loss of the representative for a disabled litigant’s ability to conduct her own case, and it had failed to consider a short postponement to allow further medical evidence to be obtained – an option the length of the listing made viable. The lesson for applicants runs in both directions: tribunals must engage properly with evidenced difficulty, and applicants must give them the evidence to engage with.