The full depth and severity of the recession, its knock-on effects on the wider employment landscape and on its own workload are revealed this week by Acas, the employment relations service.

Its latest Annual Report reveals that there was a significant (28 per cent) increase in the gross number of age discrimination claims that were passed to it for conciliation by the Employment Tribunal Service.  Between April 2008 and March 2009, some 3,395 age discrimination cases were passed to it - compared with 2,652 in the year before.  However, because of the overall increase in the number of cases of all types received by Acas, this meant that age claims still only accounted for 1.4 per cent of the total number of claims (236,116) referred to it.

Of the 1,081 ET1 age discrimination claims which Acas cleared over the year, 607 (56 per cent) were settled, 319 (30 per cent) withdrawn and 155 (14 per cent) went on to a tribunal hearing.