Early Conciliation invites Early Abuse

As experienced negotiators within the ACAS & employment tribunal environments, Employment Law Clinic can help respondents deal with an Early Conciliation application.

As an employer, if ACAS have contacted you the case can stay open for a little while yet, so the best first step is to simply tell ACAS that you’ll be taking advice, and will get back to them.

As for the advice, we can:

 

• do all the work necessary for you – the telephone calls, the negotiation, the paperwork, all the formalities to get these distractions off your desk & out of your mind – and if you’re open to making a settlement offer at all, we’ll even negotiate the best deal possible, aiming to get less than any deal you are willing to pay (for an example of our previous work, see Ward-Davies v Ducat Law).

 

• as part of the conciliation, highlight all the flaws in the claimant’s case, discouraging them from bringing an employment tribunal claim should conciliation not be successful – although this is not always needed.

 

• and if all endeavours fail, we’ll give you a fair assessment of the claim against you too, with a quote of our fees to defend any subsequent claim.

 

• and if the case goes to an actual tribunal claim (not all failed Early Conciliation claims do), we’ll off-set our fees as payment towards the cost to defend a claim.

 

• and we’ll only charge £459 for this whole service, regardless of how many hours need to be spent on your case. So if you’ve been contacted by ACAS regarding an Early Conciliation claim, and want us to deal with the whole thing for you, just give us a call on 020 3397 2979 or send us an email to EarlyConciliation@employmentlawclinic.com and we’ll get started.

 

Remember, as ACAS have contacted you, they are expected to keep the case – the option for a conciliated settlement – open for up-to a month – until it becomes obvious that no settlement is possible. Contact us now, and we’ll make sure the best settlement is available for your business.

(We’ll need to know as much about the claimant & the case as possible, and if you are willing to compromise just to get a quiet life – even if reluctant to pay an undeserving ex-employee; with this information we’ll take this distraction away from you, and advise on the best course of action for you.)

 

About ACAS Early Conciliation

Early conciliation is a free service that effectively can encourage employers to agree to pay-off ex-staff to avoid a risk of a tribunal claim, but there is often no such risk.

Regardless of what ACAS says on its website – “You should only fill in an Early Conciliation Notification form if you are certain you want to make a claim to an employment tribunal” – there is no obligation on a potential claimant to follow-up an Early Conciliation application with a tribunal claim, and the stats support the view that Early Conciliation is used more often than an employment tribunal claim ever would have been: the Hard Labour blog  gives a good summary & analysis of the stats & evaluation of the introduction of Early Conciliation  – noting among other things that there is evidence that numerous Early Conciliation applicants would never proceed to a tribunal in the case of a settlement not being offered.

 

So it certainly makes sense not to rush into making an offer to a potential claimant just because they’ve contacted ACAS, and we’ll make sure you don’t get fooled into making a settlement that you don’t need to, just fill out this form to get started: