Half of early conciliation cases result in avoiding an employment tribunal according to figures produced by ACAS.
Since early conciliation was launched last year, ACAS has dealt with 83,000 cases with three-quarters of these going through the early conciliation service.
In order to go through early conciliation to resolve matters, both employee and employer must agree to use the ACAS service. If either party won’t agree to early conciliation or doesn’t engage in the process, the case is listed for a tribunal hearing.
If no resolution can be reached within a month, the case is then listed for a tribunal hearing.
Statistics show that of those cases which go through early conciliation, almost half are concluded with a settlement or alternatives that avoid going to a tribunal.
Other cases which were not resolved through early conciliation did not always result in a tribunal hearing, often due to the fact that at that point the claimant is required to pay a fairly substantial hearing fee.