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Last week, the Government published the Employment Tribunals (Early Conciliation: Exemptions and Rules of Procedure) (Amendment) Regulations 2025 ("the Regulations"). The Regulations are expected to come into force on 1 December 2025 and will double the length of the Acas Early Conciliation window, from six weeks to twelve weeks.
What is Acas Early Conciliation?
Acas Early Conciliation is a legal process that a prospective claimant must follow before they can issue a claim to the Employment Tribunal. The prospective claimant is required to contact Acas who will liaise with both parties to see if a settlement of the dispute can be reached, instead of the dispute being formally litigated. If settlement cannot be reached, or if the prospective respondent refuses to engage in Early Conciliation, Acas will issue an Early Conciliation certificate. A prospective claimant can use this certificate to proceed with a claim to the Employment Tribunal.
What is the Acas Early Conciliation window?
The Acas Early Conciliation window begins when a prospective claimant contacts Acas and currently lasts for up to six weeks. It cannot be extended further, but the parties can continue to discuss settlement after the window closes and the Early Conciliation certificate is issued.
Notably, the window "pauses the clock" for limitation periods. At present, the majority of employment related claims must be brought within three months (less a day) of the relevant cause of action. The period of the window is however disregarded in this calculation. Where the remainder of the limitation period after the date the Early Conciliation certificate has been issued is less than one month, it is extended to one month from that date.
What repercussions will the extension have?
There is currently a huge backlog in tribunals, which increased to almost 50,000 cases at the end of 2024. As a result, employers and their legal advisers are increasingly finding the Acas Early Conciliation process flawed; on a regular basis, Acas is not contacting employers at all during the current Early Conciliation window. The Government is seeking to address these delays by doubling the length of the Acas Early Conciliation window.
Simultaneously, the limitation periods for issuing a claim in the Employment Tribunal is set to extend from three to six months once the Employment Rights Bill manages to get through the House of Lords. When this is considered together with the new Regulations, it means that employers may be unaware that there is a potential claim against them for as long as ten months after the cause of action. This could be even longer when taking into account the common administrative delays of the Employment Tribunal. Whilst it is clear that steps are being taken to address the backlogs, the extension of the Acas Early Conciliation window may not effectively address the issue; the delay in addressing issues with an employer may have a knock-on effect, particularly on the ability for parties to address issues efficiently, as well as the availability of witnesses due to staff departures and the quality of witness evidence due to faded memories, should the matter eventually reach hearing stage.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.
