Vento bands: injury to feelings awards explained

What are Vento bands?

Vento bands are guideline bands, set by Presidential Guidance and updated every year, that employment tribunals use to value injury-to-feelings awards in discrimination claims. There are three bands, a lower, middle and upper band, running from the least serious cases to the most serious, with room above the top band for truly exceptional cases.

The name comes from Vento v Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police, the 2002 Court of Appeal case that first set out a banded approach to injury-to-feelings awards, replacing a more scattergun practice of ad hoc figures. The bands themselves are not fixed by statute: the President of the Employment Tribunals reissues them by an addendum to the Presidential Guidance, broadly uprating the figures each year.

The three Vento bands and the current figures

The bands cover the range of seriousness a tribunal finds in the discrimination itself, not the outcome of the wider claim. As of 6 April 2026 (2026/27), the bands are:

• Lower band, £1,300 to £12,600: for less serious cases, such as a single incident or a one-off act of discrimination.
• Middle band, £12,600 to £37,700: for cases that are serious enough not to fall into the lower band, but do not merit an award in the top band.
• Upper band, £37,700 to £62,900: for the most serious cases, such as a lengthy campaign of discriminatory treatment, with only the most exceptional cases capable of exceeding the top of this band.

Source: Presidential Guidance, Vento bands addendum, in force from 6 April 2026. These figures are pulled live from the same rates table the rest of this site uses, so they update automatically when the President reissues the guidance; nothing on this page is a fixed number that could quietly go stale.

How do Vento bands interact with settlement negotiation?

Where a claim includes an element of discrimination, both sides estimate where a tribunal is likely to place any injury-to-feelings award within the current bands, then add that estimate to the other heads of loss being negotiated, such as lost earnings or notice pay. A stronger, more serious set of facts pushes the anticipated award toward the top of a band, or into the band above, and that in turn moves the overall settlement figure both sides are working from.

A Vento award is separate from, and sits on top of, compensation for financial loss such as the compensatory award in an unfair dismissal claim, and a tribunal can add aggravated or exemplary damages on top of a Vento award in a genuinely bad case. Because the bands are guidance rather than a fixed tariff, an experienced adviser weighing settlement value against the risk and cost of a hearing needs to place the specific facts within the range, not simply quote the band itself.

Frequently asked questions