Three sets of numbers published this year point in the same direction. People are more willing than ever to challenge how they are treated at work, how their personal data is handled, and how their organisations are run. The formal systems meant to address those challenges are struggling to keep up. For smaller cultural and charitable organisations, with small teams of freelancers and volunteers rather than large HR and compliance departments, this could become a material risk worth reviewing.
In the first three months of 2026, employment tribunals received around 15,000 new single claims, and the number of single claims waiting to be heard reached about 64,000, up 55% on the same point a year earlier. Claims are being lodged faster than they can be resolved, and the backlog keeps growing. The most common claims were for unfair dismissal, disability discrimination and unlawful deductions from wages, the everyday stuff of working life rather than complex disputes.
The picture at the Information Commissioner's Office is similar. The ICO received 76,743 data protection complaints in 2025/26, up from 42,315 the year before, a rise of about 81% in a single year. Reports of personal data breaches climbed too, from 12,412 to 17,431. The regulator has been candid that this "sustained and unprecedented growth" has outrun its capacity: only about 27% of data protection complaints are now dealt with within its 90-day target, and its six-month resolution rate has fallen from almost 99% to under 70%.
Charities feel the same pressure from their own regulator. The Charity Commission opened just over 1,550 new regulatory concern cases in the first three months of 2026, part of a year that ran consistently high, and charities themselves filed nearly 900 serious incident reports in the same quarter. The Commission is clear that reporting an incident is a sign of a well-run charity rather than proof that something has gone wrong, but the trend is unmistakable: trustees are under closer scrutiny, and are expected to spot and deal with problems earlier.
Several things are driving all this. People know their rights better and are more ready to act on them. Free online tools, including AI, make it easier to bring a claim or lodge a complaint. And more employment law reform is on the way under the Employment Rights Act 2025, which is expected to widen access to unfair dismissal protection. The direction of travel is clear: more challenges, not fewer.
A tribunal claim or an ICO complaint that might once have been resolved in months can now hang over an organisation for a year or more, taking up time, money and attention, and casting a long shadow over morale, reputation and confidence while it does. When the systems are slow, prevention is worth far more than cure.
Prevention is better than cure. First, get your organisation's paperwork in order, update any old policies and actually use them. That means clear contracts and volunteer agreements and up-to-date disciplinary and grievance policies, but more importantly it means fair, consistent procedures and managers who know how to handle a concern early and calmly. Most claims grow out of a process that felt unfair, not just the underlying disagreement, so dealing with issues promptly and even-handedly, and keeping a written record of what you did and why, is the best protection there is.
Second, tidy up your data protection housekeeping. Know what personal data you hold on staff, freelancers, members and audiences; be ready to respond to a subject access request within the time limit; make sure people have a clear route to raise a concern with you directly, which the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 now expects of you; and give the people who handle personal data some basic training, such as the ICO's free Data Protection Essentials. Much of this is quick to put right, and it is exactly the groundwork that keeps a complaint from becoming a case.
None of this is about bracing for the worst. It is about the ordinary good practice that lets you get on with your work knowing that, if something does go wrong, you handled it properly. If you would like us to review your contracts, policies, data protection practices or governance, or to help train your team, do get in touch.
Sources:
Tribunal Statistics Quarterly, January to March 2026 (GOV.UK)
Charity Commission casework and registrations data: January to March 2026 (GOV.UK)
0 Comments