Key changes to Early Conciliation: What employers need to know

Key changes to Early Conciliation: What employers need to know

Before an employee can bring a claim in the Employment Tribunal, they have to go through ACAS Early Conciliation (EC). Think of it as the mandatory “let’s try to sort this out before we lawyer-up” stage in the employment dispute process. An ACAS conciliator speaks to both sides, tries to broker a deal, and if everyone’s happy, the settlement becomes legally binding.

If not, ACAS issues a certificate and the employee can move ahead with an Employment Tribunal claim. While all this is happening, the usual tribunal time limits are paused.

Early Conciliation is getting longer

The Government has now published a draft of the Employment Tribunals (Early Conciliation: Exemptions and Rules of Procedure) (Amendment) Regulations 2025 and the headline employment law update for 2025 is big: the EC period is doubling from six weeks to twelve.

From 1st December 2025, any new dispute raised with ACAS will fall into this new 12-week Early Conciliation period. Anything already open before that date stays on the current six-week timeline.

The aim is simple: give everyone more time to resolve employment disputes early and reduce pressure on the (already overloaded) Tribunal system.

What this means for time limits

Normally, employees must start Early Conciliation within three months minus one day of their termination date (or the alleged discriminatory act). With EC now lasting up to 12 weeks, and the claimant still getting a month after EC ends to submit their claim, the overall time window for Employment Tribunal claims is going to be significantly longer.

In practice, employers could now be looking at up to seven months from the date of the incident before a claim might land. That means good record-keeping for employers just went from “important” to “absolutely essential” for managing legal risk.

What employers should be doing now

To get ahead of these employment law changes, employers should:

• Review and tighten employment contracts and internal HR policies to reduce legal risk later on.
• Strengthen record-keeping practices, ensuring accurate and accessible documentation for grievances, disciplinaries and redundancies.
• Train managers on handling internal processes, including grievances, disciplinaries, and redundancy procedures — because many disputes turn on how these were handled long before ACAS becomes involved.

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