Since the abolishment of the employment tribunal fees in July 2017 there has been an increase in both ACAS Early Conciliation (EC) notifications and employment tribunal claims.
ACAS recently published their statistics between April to December 2017 which showed:
- EC notifications have increased from 1,700 per week in July 2017 to 2,200 per week since the end of July 2017;
- since the 28 August 2017 the number of EC notifications is up 57% from the same period in 2016; and
- EC succeeded in settling 17% of cases with 26% of the balance progressing to tribunal.
The Ministry of Justice has also published its provisional tribunal statistics for October to December 2017 showing that single employment tribunal claims increase by 90%.
The floodgates for employment tribunal claims are opening and so it is more vital than ever to ensure that you have the correct documentation in place, including contracts and policies in place to avoid an employment tribunal claim and that you provide appropriate training to those staff members who may be required to deal with disciplinaries, grievances and appeals.
We can provide in-house disciplinary and grievance hearing. If you are interested please contact charlotte.astridge@ts-p.co.uk.
For more information, please view: Conciliation Update: April 2017 - December 2017 from ACAS, and Tribunals and gender recognition certificate statistics quarterly: October to December 2017 from the .gov website.
