Employment Law Advocates

Today, both the statutory disciplinary dismissal procedure and the statutory grievance procedure ceased to exist, subject to some very messy transitional provisions. It is hoped this will achieve two things, firstly that employers and employees will no longer suffer draconian consequences for non-compliance and, secondly, that there will be less litigation about the meaning of the terms in the procedures. The former has been achieved but it is doubtful whether the same can be said of the latter. The ACAS Code of Practice which replaces them is just as ambiguous.

For one thing, the procedures in the Code of Practice apply to “employees” but it is not at all clear whether this includes those who have left employment, even less so for those who have raised grievances in employment but have resigned shortly afterwards, a not uncommon scenario. The old grievance procedures certainly did apply in these cases but¬†parties had the option to use a much less onerous modified procedure under the circumstances.

The modified procedure has now been abolished. Michael Scutt, aka Jobsworth, who has provided an extremely useful summary of the changes here, welcomes this as he interprets it as saying that there is no duty to respond to the grievances of ex-employees. We have to hope that a similar view is taken by the appellate courts because, if not, I for one will certainly be mourning the abolition of the modified procedure and tribunals will be required to exercise their just and equitable discretion not to award uplifts where parties have acted sensibly in this regard. In any event, we can be sure that the law reports will be continuing to report cases regarding procedural issues.