ABSTRACT
The need for an alternative to employment tribunals was, in fact, first considered by labour lawyers in the early 1980s.6 Since then, and due in part to the 1990s Woolf reforms, its impetus has gathered pace. For instance, Doyle attributes recent ADR developments, including the unfair dismissal arbitral route, to Lord Woolf’s Civil Justice Review of 1996: ‘Lord Woolf envisaged a new landscape in civil justice, in which people will be encouraged to start court proceedings to resolve disputes only as a last resort, and after using more appropriate means when these are available.’7
