Government reforms (1): ACAS early conciliation – an update

What do we already know?

On 6 April 2014, ACAS launched a free early conciliation (EC) service for employers and employees. EC became mandatory for most types of Tribunal claims on 6 May 2014 (see our previous updates on EC here).

In our September Newsletter Government reforms (3): ACAS early conciliation – an update we let you know that from 6 April to 30 June 2014:

• 17,145 people used the service and ACAS received around 1,600 notifications a week, with only 3% of the first contact came from the employer;

• 11,000 cases began and ended their EC period and 16.5% resulted in a successful settlement and 19% of employees told ACAS they were not proposing to take the matter further.

What’s new?

ACAS has now published its second set of statistics. Between 6 April 2014 and 30 September 2014:

• 37,404 people used the service;
• 24% of the cases notified between April and June 2014 progressed to a Tribunal claim (to date, almost 25% of these have gone on to be settled by ACAS);
• 18% resulted in a COT3 settlement; and
• the remaining 58% of cases were taken no further.

This would again seem to be further evidence that the fees regime is having a significant downward impact on the level of Tribunal claims.