5 Fatal Mistakes Litigants in Person Make with Employment Tribunal Bundles

Last updated: May 2026 · For claimants in England, Wales and Scotland

Quick Answer

The five mistakes that cost litigants in person the most at the Employment Tribunal: (1) filing a bundle that is not OCR-searchable, (2) including legally privileged Without Prejudice or ACAS correspondence, (3) pagination that resets in every section instead of running continuously, (4) writing a witness statement that does not reference bundle page numbers, and (5) treating bundle preparation as the employer's job. Each one is fixable — but only if you know to look for it.

Why These Mistakes Matter

Employment Tribunals are increasingly digital and increasingly time-pressed. The Judge has limited reading hours before the hearing. A bundle that wastes those hours — by being unsearchable, badly ordered, or padded with privileged material — costs you credibility before you have spoken a word.

The Employment Tribunal Procedure Rules 2024 (in force 6 January 2025) and the Presidential Guidance on Remote and In-Person Hearings give tribunals broad powers to order costs against a party who files a badly prepared bundle. Tribunals have made costs orders against parties who filed non-OCR bundles.

Mistake 1 — Filing a Bundle That Isn't OCR-Searchable

What goes wrong

Photographs of letters. Screenshots of texts saved as images. PDF scans of documents that were never run through Optical Character Recognition. The result: pages the Judge cannot search, cannot copy text from, cannot highlight.

Why it matters

Paragraph 24 of the Presidential Guidance on Remote and In-Person Hearings is unambiguous:

All pages in an e-bundle that contain typed text must be subject to OCR (optical character recognition) if they have not been created directly as electronic text documents.

Tribunals expect this. Some make costs orders when it's missing.

The fix

• Use a PDF tool with OCR (Adobe Acrobat, PDFgear, online OCR services)
• Run every page through OCR before assembly
• For phone screenshots: use a separate OCR app first, then export as PDF

BundleCreator runs OCR on documents at export, so the bundle is designed to be searchable when it leaves the platform (subject to the source PDFs being processable).

Mistake 2 — Including Without Prejudice and ACAS Correspondence

What goes wrong

Claimants instinctively want the Judge to see the cynical settlement offer that came after the dismissal. So they put it in the bundle. Or they include the email exchange with the ACAS conciliator, thinking it shows the employer's bad faith.

Why it matters

• Without Prejudice correspondence is legally privileged. Including it is a procedural breach. The tribunal will be invited to disregard it — but by then the Judge has seen the gist.
• ACAS conciliation discussions are confidential by statute (s.18 Employment Tribunals Act 1996). Including them is worse — the conciliator can be required to give evidence about how they were disclosed.
• The damage is to credibility. The tribunal sees a claimant who either doesn't understand the rules or is happy to ignore them.

The fix

• Keep WP correspondence and ACAS conciliation in a separate folder, never in the bundle
• If you need to refer to the fact that a settlement offer was made (for example, to explain a delay), say so in submissions — do not produce the document
• Do not include any settlement correspondence in the main bundle. After judgment, if costs are in issue, there is a specific type of letter — "without prejudice save as to costs" (sometimes called a "Calderbank" letter) — that may then be deployed on the costs question. That is a separate, post-judgment process, and you should take advice before relying on it

Mistake 3 — Pagination That Resets in Each Section

What goes wrong

Section A pages run A1, A2, A3. Then Section B starts at B1, B2, B3. Each section restarts.

Why it matters

When the Judge asks counsel to "go to page 47", they mean the 47th page of the bundle. Not "A47" or "B47" or "C47". Section-restart pagination requires everyone in the hearing to specify which section every time, slows cross-examination, and is increasingly disfavoured.

Some tribunals are explicit:

Bundles shall be paginated continuously through the entire bundle. Section letters may be used as descriptive labels for the index but are not part of the pagination scheme.

The fix

• Number the pages 1, 2, 3, … straight through to the end of the bundle
• Use section dividers for navigation, not as a numbering scheme
• If your case management order specifies "A1, A2 …" format (some still do), follow it — but check whether the order really requires section-restart or whether you can switch to continuous

BundleCreator's bundle editor lets you toggle between continuous and section-restart numbering depending on the order in your case.

Mistake 4 — Witness Statements That Don't Reference Bundle Pages

What goes wrong

17. On 14 March 2024 my manager sent me an email criticising my performance. I replied the same day explaining that the criticism was unfair.

The Judge reads the statement before the hearing. The Judge wants to see the email. The Judge cannot find it.

Why it matters

Under modern tribunal practice, witness statements replace examination-in-chief. The Judge reads the statement, the witness is sworn in, and we go straight to cross-examination. If the Judge cannot find the documents the statement refers to, the evidence is much weaker.

Worse: the Judge starts to suspect the document either doesn't exist or doesn't say what the witness claims. Either way, credibility erodes.

The fix

17. On 14 March 2024 my manager sent me an email criticising my performance [B47]. I replied the same day [B49] explaining that the criticism was unfair.

Every document mentioned, page-referenced. Single page: [B47]. Range: [B47–B49].

The only way to do this properly is to finalise the bundle first, then write the statement against the finalised page numbers. Don't try to write the statement and the bundle in parallel — re-numbering breaks the cross-references.

Mistake 5 — Treating Bundle Preparation as the Employer's Job

What goes wrong

The case management order says "the Respondent shall prepare the bundle". So the claimant waits. Eventually the bundle arrives — and it contains only the documents the employer wanted in.

Why it matters

The respondent's solicitor is doing their job: producing the bundle their client wants the tribunal to see. They are not the claimant's representative. They will leave out the email where the manager said something embarrassing. They will leave out the document showing the disciplinary process started before the alleged misconduct.

The bundle preparation direction places the administrative responsibility on the respondent. It does not place the substantive responsibility on the respondent to include documents helpful to the claimant. That's your job.

The fix

• At least 28 days before the bundle filing deadline, send the respondent a numbered list of every document you want in the bundle
• Attach copies
• Note any documents you want included that they hold but you don't (request specific disclosure if necessary)
• Negotiate the index
• If they refuse to include a relevant document, lodge a supplementary bundle of disputed documents and ask the tribunal to direct inclusion under Rule 33

This is the single most important thing a litigant in person can do. The bundle is your evidence. Take responsibility for what's in it.

Bonus: Two More Mistakes Worth Knowing

Bonus 1 — Submitting a 600-page bundle when 60 would do

Volume is not strength. Judges complain about over-stuffed bundles in nearly every Presidential Guidance update. Apply the relevance test ruthlessly: would I refer to this document at the hearing? If not, leave it out.

Bonus 2 — Missing the bundle deadline

The case management order sets the deadline — typically 7 to 14 working days before the final hearing. Late filing risks:

• A costs order under Part 13 of the 2024 Rules
• The tribunal refusing to admit late documents under its general case management powers
• Postponement of the hearing (with costs consequences)

Diary the deadline the day you receive the case management order. Aim to file two working days early.

How BundleCreator Stops You Making These Mistakes

BundleCreator is built to eliminate these errors:

• Automatic OCR at export — designed to produce a searchable bundle where the source allows
• Continuous pagination — automatic, recalculated as you reorder sections
• No WP / ACAS section — there's no place for privileged material in the bundle template
• Index sync — page references stay accurate as the bundle changes
• Compliance check on export — flags missing index, missing pagination, oversized files

Start your tribunal bundle — £12 →

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Related Articles

• The Complete Pillar Guide: How to Make an Employment Tribunal Bundle
• How to Write an Employment Tribunal Witness Statement
• Missed the Employment Tribunal Bundle Deadline? What to Do Next

Disclaimer: This guide describes common procedural mistakes and how to avoid them. It does not address the legal merits of any individual claim. For case-specific advice contact ACAS (0300 123 1100), Citizens Advice, or a qualified employment lawyer.