Early conciliation and employment tribunal data for England, Scotland, and Wales: July to September 2025

• Between July 2023 and September 2025, monthly total individual early conciliation case receipts have increased by 40%, with an average quarter-on-quarter growth rate of 4%. The highest quarterly increase of 10% was recorded in January to March 2025. Case receipts have risen for the past 5 quarters in a row.
• Open track cases accounted for 41% of all worker-led individual cases this quarter. The proportion of open track cases has increased in each quarter presented in this bulletin.
• Open track group cases made up 54% of group cases for July to September 2025, increasing 6 percentage points from 48% in April to June 2025.
• 66% of cases did not progress to the employment tribunal. This represents a 2 percentage point decrease compared with the previous quarter.
• Open track cases made up 58% of employment tribunal claim form (ET1) receipts for July to September 2025, this represents a 3 percentage point increase compared with the previous quarter.

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. This is to try 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 96% of all early conciliation notifications came from workers in July to September 2025. This remains consistent with the 4 previous quarters between July 2024 and September 2025 which have fluctuated between 94% and 96%.

The proportion of the open track group cases rose from 34% in January to March 2025 to 54% in July to September 2025, marking a 20 percentage point increase overall. 

Open track cases made up 41% of the worker-led individual cases in July to September 2025. This is continuing a gradual upward trend from the earlier quarters, including a 2 percentage point increase from April to June 2025.

Employer-led early conciliation notifications

Employer-led early conciliation notifications made up around 4% of early conciliation notifications in July to September 2025. This has decreased by 2 percentage points from the previous quarter (April to June 2025). 

Standard track cases had the largest number of employer-led notifications in all 5 quarters from July 2024 to September 2025. They accounted for 71% of employer-led cases, which is consistent with the previous quarters. There was no movement compared with April to June 2025.

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

In July to September 2025, 20% of early conciliation cases were closed without parties engaging in early conciliation. This is consistent with the previous quarter, but is a 4 percentage point decrease from January to March 2025 where 24% of cases did not engage in conciliation. 

Most of the cases that were not conciliated were cases with no track assigned. This made up 84% of cases in July to September 2025. This is down from 85% in April to June 2025, and down from 87% in the previous 2quarters. 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 (3% in each of the last 3 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 July 2024 to September 2025. 8% of cases did not progress to conciliation in July to September 2025. There was no movement compared with April to June 2025.

Settlement of early conciliation cases

This data is reported a quarter behind all other statistics in this bulletin. This is due to the lag time between issuing a early conciliation certificate and the corresponding ET1 form. This table covers early conciliation, worker-led and group cases only, and is based on outcomes of cases received in April to June 2025.

Around 66% of cases did not lead to the submission of an ET1 throughout April to June 2025, this represents a 2 percentage point decrease compared with the previous quarter.

Of those with an assigned track, the fast track cases were most likely not to progress to ET1 (77% in April to June 2025). The proportion of cases that did not progress to tribunal decreased for cases with no track assigned in April to June 2025 (63%). This is compared to the previous quarter (62%).

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 recorded in open track cases, accounting for around 58% of all ET1 receipts in July to September 2025. This is a 3 percentage point increase from the 55% observed across the previous 3 quarters.

The lowest proportion of ET1 receipts was seen in cases with no track assigned. This represents less than 1% of receipts in the reviewed quarter and remained below 2% in each of the last 4 quarters (July 2024 to June 2025).

This data is based on cases that had an outcome within the quarters covered in this bulletin. It does not correspond to the cases that were received in Table 5.

79% of all employment tribunal cases in July to September 2025 did not progress to a hearing. This remains unchanged from April to June 2025 and is consistent with the pattern observed across July 2024 to March 2025. 

Among cases with an assigned track, open track cases were the least likely to progress to a hearing, while fast track cases were the most likely to do so. 

Acas settled around 70% of cases that did not progress to a tribunal hearing in July to September 2025. This represents a 4 percentage point decrease from 74% in April to June 2025, although a similar figure to the other quarters presented in this bulletin. 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 and 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 in the methodology article and background quality reports on:

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

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