Meeting with an MP, H Hon Angela Rayner has been scheduled for 15 Jul 2022 in Manchester.

"Letter has been sent to HMCTS Nick Goodwin , and Paul Scully MP at the BEIS Department has been asked for his comments on holding the progress as the Rules owner."

Please provide any ideas, proposals for this meeting to: etpeti@proton.me

Or leave feedback on Employment Tribunal experience here: employmenttribunals.service.gov.uk [https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/employmenttribunals.service.gov.uk

Routine recording of Employment Tribunal hearings was not a priority in the 2018 £1bill HMCTS programme of change. However pandemic partially forced those changes:

"Video and phone hearings
These arrangements have been developed in close partnership with the judiciary and others in the justice system and have included a rapid expansion of audio and video equipment in courts and tribunals. In just two weeks, there has been an 800% increase in the number of hearings held using such equipment and there are now more fully video hearings each day than those taking place in person. There’s more to do to make sure we have the right arrangements, technology and skills in every bit of the system to do this as well as we can – and we’re continuing to work on upgrading the systems we’re using, and learning rapidly from what’s been done so far.

Open Justice
Media and interested parties continue to be able to attend physical hearings in the ‘open’ courts to uphold the principles of open justice. Where this is not possible, judicial consideration is being given to enable new ways for journalists to join a hearing remotely,

or receive a transcript afterwards.

We are continuing to work to develop ways in which we can continue to support media and public access to the work or courts and tribunals."HMCTS CEO, 08 Apr 2020[https://insidehmcts.blog.gov.uk/2020/04/08/responding-to-coronavirus-in-our-courts-and-tribunals/

However its not standardised and the ET Rules have not been amended post pandemic to reflect recording of All the ET hearings and access for Claimants.

Form EX107OFC is still not included in the Gov.uk guidelines:

"Off-Framework – user permissions form (EX107 OFC)This form gives limited permission to prepare a transcript or report from a recording made other than by the court/tribunal, and where the court/tribunal are not contributing to the commissioning of those services."

And ET seems not familiar with it:

"In respect of your request for a transcript of the hearing, that application can only be made after the hearing if it has been recorded.
If you want to apply for the preliminary hearing to be recorded, you should provide your reasons as to why you believe that this is necessary for you to participate in the hearing."ET, 22 Jun 22

Whereas there is known delay in obtaining 'old style' transcripts from physical transcription services and involves Form application, there should be easier way for ET to deal with this requests, given strict deadlines for appeals and reconsiderations:

"The PD (Practice Direction) also clarifies the audio and video hearing PD 51Y (the 116th PD Update) by making clear that a person seeking permission to listen to or view a recording of a hearing may do so by request and is not required to make a formal application under the CPR."118th Practice Direction Update to the Civil Procedure Rules -Coronavirus Pandemic related

"A social enterprise set up by a legal aid barrister is aiming to slash the cost of court transcripts by harnessing voice recognition software. Sophie Walker, of One Pump Court, says that technology can help make the workings of the justice system understandable to a far wider audience."Law Gazette, New tech to ‘halve’ transcript costs

"Some jurisdictions have embraced real-time technology-assisted reporting, with countries such as Ireland using voice recognition technology to enable rapid availability of transcripts. Indeed, the UK government’s own digital marketplace already lists a Digital Justice Platform which can ‘create high quality digital audio and video recordings of court proceedings’. Its ‘Speech to Text service is used to automatically generate a high quality transcript, using AI technology. Audio and transcript is available within minutes of the spoken word via the FTR app’."Law Gazette, Dragging tribunals into the 21st century