Early conciliation is a free, voluntary service

The Acas employment advisory and conciliation service has been in touch in response to our item in the March issue of Labour Research on the early conciliation procedure that comes into effect on 6 April 2014.

Gill McCarthy, Acas director operational policy and performance, Early Conciliation Team, writes:

“We welcome your article explaining how Early Conciliation (EC) will work (Compulsory conciliation: what are the key issues, March, page 25) but we are concerned about describing our new service as ‘compulsory conciliation’.

“This is a misleading term to use as EC is a free voluntary service that starts from April this year and will replace our existing pre-claim conciliation (PCC) service, which is also voluntary.

“You have correctly mentioned in your article that anyone who wants to bring a claim under EC has to contact Acas first. This is the only mandatory requirement.

“It is up to the individual concerned on whether they wish to accept the offer of voluntary Early Conciliation or reject it. People can still choose to go straight to an employment tribunal if they don’t want to try EC.”

www.acas.org.uk/index.aspx?articleid=4028