The Acas early conciliation period currently runs for 6 weeks from Day A, which is the date the potential claimant in an Employment Tribunal claim completes the Acas online form.
With effect from 1 December 2025, the Employment Tribunals (Early Conciliation: Exemptions and Rules of Procedure) (Amendment) Regulations 2025 extend this period to 12 weeks.
This decision has caused consternation among employment lawyers and commentators due to the current inability of Acas to manage the volume of early conciliation matters, and one has to seriously wonder how the time extension can possibly remedy the situation. The Employment Lawyers Association is working tirelessly to address the issues around this. If the powers that be would just listen to practitioners on the ground, some progress might be achieved.
It is a universally accepted truth that the Employment Tribunals Service is, through no fault of its own, on its knees. This is a result of a persistent refusal by successive governments to fund the system so that it can meet the demands of disgruntled employees. Perhaps as a society, we are becoming more litigious. Perhaps employers are less willing to reach an amicable solution with employees. Who knows what the reasons are for the huge uptick in claims for early conciliation and for the services of the Employment Tribunals, but the system will literally grind to a halt when the Labour Government introduces a raft of new provisions with the Employment Rights Bill, which will shortly become the Employment Rights Act 2025.
I don’t have the answers, but I have some observations based on practice. The introduction of the early conciliation process appears to have done little to stem the volume of claims which proceed to the Employment Tribunal. For many claimants, the process is merely a process. Acas does not (again through no fault of its own) have the time or resources to steer claimants towards resolution. For many respondents, it is also a process. Many will not engage at all. If respondents won’t engage with Acas or claimant lawyers, what then? The only route open is the Employment Tribunal. How does doubling the time period help? Isn’t it time to accept that early conciliation has failed and to rip it up and start again?
I once had the privilege of appearing before an employment tribunal in the Vaud tribunal in Lausanne, Switzerland. I had no legal standing but was acting as a litigant friend, with the consent of the tribunal and the respondent, because my client had no legal representation and no mental capacity to conduct matters. I will not go into the thrill of delivering advocacy in French or the huge buzz I got from those hearings, but what really struck me was the system the Swiss employment courts have in place. To my mind, it is a genuinely effective process.
In order to proceed with an employment claim in Switzerland, the parties must appear before the tribunal in advance of the claim formally being issued. Failure to do so bars the claim. Hence, I appeared for my client. He was unable to, and his claim would have died there and then. The process is mandatory. This gives the parties the opportunity to test their case in front of a judge, which is often the difference it takes to get the parties to a place of resolution, hence the use of judicial mediation in the tribunals of England & Wales. Judicial mediation is currently voluntary. If it were mandatory, perhaps fewer cases would proceed to the ET, and perhaps Acas early conciliation would not be needed at all.
Perhaps it’s time to look at what happens in other jurisdictions and see what actually works?
This blog was written by Karen Jackson, CEO of didlaw.
