10. Going to an employment tribunal

If you want to make a complaint under the Disability Discrimination Act, you must send your complaint either on form ET1 or in a letter to the Regional Office of Employment Tribunals. You can get this form from a jobcentre or the Disability Rights Commission.

It will then decide whether there are 'reasonable grounds' for going ahead with a claim. You must make your complaint within three months, minus one day, from when you first knew about the discrimination. The cost of going to a tribunal is low. Even if you lose your case, you won't have to pay the other side's costs unless the tribunal decides you were unreasonable in bringing the claim.

If you do want to take a complaint to an employment tribunal, you normally fill in a form, called a DL56, and send it to the employer. You can get this form from the Disability Rights Commission, which can also help you with the form.

The form has questions where the employer will give more reasons for your treatment. For example, if you believe that you didn't get a job because of your disability, you can ask for details of the employer's selection procedures, and of the qualifications and experience of the person who got the job. You must send it to the employer within three months of when the discrimination happened, or no more than 21 days after your complaint was received by the employment tribunal.

You don't have to use the DL56 procedure, but it will normally help your case. In the same way, the employer doesn't legally have to fill in the form, but if they don't, it may harm their case. And if you do use it, you can still withdraw your complaint before your case is dealt with if you want to.

You or the employer can appeal against the tribunal’s decision to the Employment Appeals Tribunal. But you can appeal only on whether the law was applied correctly, not on whether you thought the tribunal's decision was fair. You have 42 days after the decision to start an appeal.