Emplyment Tribunal deadlines not met by employer

[pieterhartzer]

After a rather complicated process at a previous employer, I was made redundant. As part of the process of finding new employment by the organisation, they offered me a position with exactly the same title as the one that I was made redundant from despite stating the role would not longer exist and failed to match me to the role during the redundancy process.
There is a lot more behind the situation which I won't bore you with unless requested as it's a rather lengthy topic.

I ended up, after speaking to ACAS, with a tribunal case. The court issued a RULE 10 -EMPLOYMENT TRIBUNALS RULES OF PROCEDURE2013 with specific deadlines for compiling the bundle and exchanging witness statements. The last two of which were in Nov and Dec 2020.

After not being able to get hold of the legal representative for the employer (since Oct 2020) I sent my witness statement to them and to the court on the deadline dates. The representative got in touch on 19 Jan 2021, more than a month after the last deadline and two months after the previous missed deadline, stating that they were off on long term sickness. New dates for the exchange of documents and compiling the bundle were suggested by them. This email was sent to me directly and not to the court too.

Do I have to accept these dates or do I have a legal leg to stand on given the fact that they missed the deadlines? I haven't responded to the email yet as I fear it might spoil any advantage I might currently have.

[ULA]

Firstly, I would just say that if the solicitor was in fact off on long-term sick then the law firm they work for should have had processes in place to deal with the person’s work-load in their absence, particularly court matters that are often governed by time sensitive deadlines.

A suggestion would be that you respond back saying that the correspondence requesting an extension on the deadlines for compiling the bundle and exchanging witness statements should be addressed to the Tribunal and not to you given that you have complied with the requirements of the order.