The Tribunals Service saw a 40% rise in claims this financial year, far greater than it had anticipated.

However, the service still managed to reduce its costs by £9m, through greater efficiency.

The Tribunal Service’s annual report showed that it disposed of 20,000 more claims than in 2007/08. The biggest increases were in asylum and immigration, social security and child support, and employment, which between them saw 40% more claims than had been predicted last year.

The increase in workload meant the Service narrowly missed two performance targets, relating to the length of time it took to process claims and customer satisfaction.

The £9 million costs saving represented a 3% reduction in the Service’s operating costs.

Kevin Sadler, chief executive of the Tribunals Service, said: ‘To put what was a strong performance in context, targets and funding were set before we knew our workloads were going to increase so dramatically. We received around 40% more claims in our main jurisdictions than we were expecting or resourced to cope with, with the biggest increases coming in the latter half of the year.

‘Yet we still managed to clear more appeals than we had the previous year, so we performed better, in tougher conditions.’