Dear Judge…

From Monday Employment Tribunal Chairmen will be renamed Employment Judges in accordance with the Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Act 2007.

For representatives and litigants, the most significant change will be to correspondence. Where previously you would have written ‘Please put this application before a Chairman’, you should now write “Please put this application before a Judge’ and so on.

During a hearing, Employment Judges should be addressed as ‘Sir’ or ‘Madam’, as before.

Doubtless, people will continue to refer to ‘Chairmen’ for many years yet. Many practitioners have only just stopped talking about ‘Industrial Tribunals’.