Early conciliation and employment tribunal data for England, Scotland, and Wales: April to June 2025

• Open track group cases made up 48% of group cases for April to June 2025, increasing from 34% in January to March 2025.
• Open track cases accounted for the largest number of worker-led individual cases between April and June 2025, making up 39% of cases.
• Standard track cases accounted for 71% of employer-led cases for April to June 2025, down from 74% in January to March 2025.
• 68% of early conciliation notifications did not progress to employment tribunal between April and June 2025, remaining consistent from the previous quarter.
• Open track cases made up 55% of employment tribunal claim form (ET1) receipts April to June 2025, a similar proportion to January to March 2025.
• 79% of employment tribunal cases received did not go on to have a hearing in April to June 2025, up slightly from 77% in January to March 2025.

When a worker wants to make a claim against their employer at an employment tribunal, in most cases they must notify Acas first. Acas offers  early conciliation to try to reach an agreement between the worker and employer and avoid the worker making a claim to an employment tribunal.

In some circumstances, the employer may approach Acas to help resolve a potential dispute. This can also be handled using early conciliation.

Early conciliation notifications can be made:

• by an individual against their employer
• on behalf of a group against their employer
• by an employer where a dispute concerning staff requires resolution

Worker-led early conciliation notifications 

Around 94% of all early conciliation notifications came from workers in April to June 2025. This remains consistent with the 4 previous quarters between January 2024 and March 2025.

Open track group cases made up 48% of group cases for April to June 2025. This is compared to:

• 34% of group cases in January to March 2025
• 41% in October to December 2024
• 50% in July to September 2024

Open track cases accounted for the largest number of individual cases between April to June 2025 with regards to worker-led early conciliation notification numbers, making up 39% of cases. This has increased slightly from 36% in January to March 2025, and 35% in October to December 2024 as well as July to September 2024.

Employer-led early conciliation notifications

Employer-led early conciliation notifications made up around 6% of early conciliation notifications between April and June 2025. This remains consistent with the 4 previous quarters from April 2024 to March 2025.

Standard track cases had the largest number of employer-led notifications between April and June 2025, continuing a trend from the 4 previous quarters. They accounted for 71% of employer-led cases for April to June 2025 compared to:

• 74% in January to March 2025
• 73% in October to December 2024
• 72% in July to September
• 68% in April to June 2024

Some early conciliation notifications are not suitable for conciliation. And the service is not mandatory so some claimants will refuse the offer.

Early conciliation cases that did not progress to conciliation

Between April and June 2025, around 20% of early conciliation cases were closed without parties engaging in early conciliation. Most of these were cases with no track assigned. This made up 85% of cases in April to June 2025, down from 87% in January to March 2025, and down from 87% in the previous two quarters. These are where Acas has not been able to get in touch with the claimant to gather enough information to assign a track, so this is to be expected.

Fast track cases were the lowest proportion of the cases that did not progress to conciliation (less than 5% in each of the last 5 quarters).

Of cases with an assigned track, open track cases made up the highest proportion of cases that were not conciliated across each of the 5 quarters between April 2024 to June 2025. This was 8% between April and June 2025, increasing slightly from around 7% in each of the 4 previous quarters.

Settlement of early conciliation cases

Due to the potential time lag between an early conciliation certificate being issued and the corresponding ET1 reaching Acas, these data cannot be accurately reported until after a period has elapsed. This means they are 1 quarter behind all the other statistics in this bulletin.

Table 4 covers early conciliation, worker-led and group cases only. It is based on outcomes of cases received in January to March 2025.

Around 68% of cases did not lead to the submission of an ET1 throughout January to March 2025. This is a similar proportion to the previous 4 periods.

Of those with an assigned track, the fast track cases were most likely not to progress to ET1 (79% between April and June 2025). The proportion of cases that did not progress to employment tribunal (ET) decreased for cases with no track assigned in January to March 2025 compared to the previous quarter (66% to 63%).

If a case is not resolved by early conciliation, the claimant can submit an ET1 form to make a claim to an employment tribunal. Conciliation can also be carried out at this stage to try to resolve the case without progressing to tribunal.

The highest level of ET1 receipts was received in open track cases. This accounted for around 55% of all ET1 receipts in April to June 2025. This is similar to January to March 2025 and October to December 2024, and up slightly from the 2 quarters prior.

The lowest proportion of ET1 receipts was received in cases with no track assigned. This accounted for less than 2% of all ET1 receipts in each of the 5 quarters between April 2024 and June 2025.

These data are based on cases that had an outcome within the quarters covered in this bulletin. They do not correspond to the cases that were received in Table 5.

79% of all employment tribunal cases in April to June 2025 did not progress to a tribunal hearing. This is up slightly from 77% in January to March 2025 but remains consistent with the periods across April 2024 to March 2025.

Of cases with an assigned track, open track cases were most likely to not progress to a hearing, with fast track cases most likely to progress to a hearing. Acas settled around 74% of the cases that did not progress to tribunal in April to June 2025, up slightly from 71% in January to March 2025. The remaining cases were withdrawn.

Conciliation or conciliating

The process of negotiation when an Acas conciliator mediates between parties in an employment dispute to try and reach agreement without going to an employment tribunal.

Conciliator

An Acas employee whose role is to mediate or conciliate between parties in an employment dispute.

Early conciliation

Acas service introduced in April 2014. Acas offers early conciliation to try to reach an agreement between parties before a formal employment tribunal claim. The prospective claimant submits an early conciliation notification to Acas, usually online, and Acas will then offer them early conciliation.

Early conciliation notification

Submission to Acas (usually online) required to begin conciliation.

Employment tribunal (ET)

Court of law charged with hearing cases within employment jurisdictions, although cases with monetary value may be heard elsewhere.

ET1

Form used by claimants to make a claim to an employment tribunal. The form is copied to Acas to allow ET1 conciliation to proceed until either the dispute is resolved, or a legal judgement is reached. It’s free to submit an ET1.

ET1 avoided

Disputes that, at the time of publication, had led to an early conciliation notification but an ET1 had not been submitted.

Group case

Cases which have been grouped together for conciliation because they are against the same employer and relate to the same dispute. 'Claimants in groups' are the number of claimants represented by these group claims.

Jurisdiction

Legal classification of the type of dispute a claim is made about. One case may contain more than one jurisdiction. For example, an unfair dismissal claim may also contain a claim under the Wages Act for unpaid wages. This could be changed in an employment tribunal.

Track

How Acas loosely classes the complexity of each case, based on the jurisdictions in the ET1 form, or the suggested jurisdictions assigned to early conciliation notifications.

The 4 tracks are:

• fast track – straightforward cases mostly relating to money, such as unpaid wages
• standard track – cases that are more complicated than fast track and involve unfair dismissal or a related jurisdiction
• open track – the most legally complex cases with at least one type of discrimination or disclosure jurisdiction
• no track assigned – cases where insufficient information is available to assign indicative jurisdictions (for example, where parties cannot be contacted)

You can find more information about data quality in our:

• methodology article
• background quality report

The information covers:

• strengths in the data
• limitations of the data
• appropriate uses of the data
• how the data were created

• Acas individual conciliation evaluation 2019
• Employment tribunal statistics on GOV.UK