We've received a letter from Newcastle tribunals Service a part of which relates to availability of reps at appeal.

"The Tribunal Service ensures where notified, that the availability of representation is taken into account, when allocating hearing dates.

However it is not always possible to adhere to the needs of individual representation or that of an organisation and its own operational arrangements.

Judicial guidance has always directed that we list represented appeal cases to the organisation not the individual representative.

Therefore the onus to provide representation to the appellant as requested is in the organisation and not an indivual employee. In circumstances such as this we look to you to provide a service.

I appreciate this may cause some inconvenience, but in trying to accomodate the requests of representatives we need to ensure there is no detrimental impact on the service we provide appellants"


To say it would cause us "inconvenience" would be an understatement as we provide advice surgeries through our borough which are well attended. If the Tribunals service are unwilling to recognise obligations to manning those then we would be in the position of having to tell some clients we can't rep.

Any other areas received a missive like this?

I would argue, fairly vehemently, that TTS is not acting reasonably. There is precedent for arguing that TTS (or indeed a Court) cannot simply require that an "organisation" picks up the pieces if an individual with conduct of a case is unavailable.

See R v Social Security Com ex p BIBI (2000) QBD (paras 17 & 18):
www.rightsnet.org.uk/pdfs/bibi.rtf

Hope this helps.

It’s not happening here, we now come under Birmingham and at a recent TUG meeting they confirmed that they will still list according to the reps availability and have said that they will maintain a central rep availability list.

Thanks. It appears the local office are acting for themselves in this. I've read earlier threads and some caselaw on this point and we'll be responding . Just wondered if it was happening elsewhere.

well that'll be interesting for me then - I've just written to Newcastle asking when I can expect a date for an appeal, and giving them my holiday dates in advance ... anticipating they will take notice of that!