Employment tribunals may seem an obvious way of solving your severance issues with your erstwhile company. It's usually a case of weighing up the pay off on offer against the chances of success in a tribunal case even if you know your grievance obviously holds water.

Sensible people do their best to avoid going through protracted legal disputes, but there are vast numbers of employment disputes begun each year by claimants who know that it's a good way of leveraging a settlement out of an employer even when that employer was quite justified in booting them out of the door.

Now the UK government plans to introduce a £500 fee to try to stop plaintiffs launching vexatious claims. Good news for employers.