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Conciliation Update: April 2018 - September 2018

Table 1: Early Conciliation (EC) Notifications by Track, Apr 2018 - Sep 2018

EC Notifications		Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Total
Employee Notifications¹	Fast	3,721	6,985	4,833	4,220	5,517	4,165	29,441
	Standard	2,109	2,189	2,073	2,173	2,322	2,108	12,974
	Open	2,140	2,428	3,476	2,634	4,401	2,675	17,754
	No Track	641	734	926	802	705	644	4,452
	All	8,611	12,336	11,308	9,829	12,945	9,592	64,621

Employer Notifications	Fast	42	47	48	285	64	255	741
	Standard	197	201	139	276	147	135	1,095
	Open	52	60	52	44	37	32	277
	No Track	2	5	2	4	7	8	28
	All	293	313	241	609	255	430	2,141
Total		8,904	12,649	11,549	10,438	13,200	10,002	66,762

Some EC notifications are made on behalf of groups of employees. Over 2,100 group notifications, covering more than 18,000 individuals, are included in the total of 66,762 notifications shown in Table 1. This means that the number of individuals covered by notifications was of the order of 85,400 between April 2018 and September 2018.

It should be noted that from April to September just shy of 11,400 connected cases which appear in these tables were submitted in relation to a particular dispute concerning Equal Pay and other related jurisdictions.

Note: Acas records indicative jurisdictions against cases received. Many cases involve multiple jurisdictions so 'track' is used to categorise cases by jurisdiction. Open Track cases contain at least one discrimination or disclosure type jurisdiction. Standard Track must contain Unfair Dismissal or a related jurisdiction. The remaining Fast Track cases mostly relate to monetary issues such as unpaid wages. In some cases Acas has not yet identified any relevant jurisdictions which is why a small minority are recorded as 'no track' cases. Cases are confined exclusively to one of the three tracks, because track is determined by the highest jurisdiction in the case.

Table 2: Early Conciliation Status, Cases Cleared Apr 2018 - Sep 2018

All Conciliation Case Outcomes Current Status, Apr 2018 - Sep 2018²	Apr		May		Jun		Jul		Aug		Sep		Year to Date
	No.	%	No.	%	No.	%	No.	%	No.	%	No.	%	No.	%
COT3 Settlement	1,243	14	1,268	11	1,225	11	1,595	14	1,385	11	1,343	14	8,059	12
Dispute has not Progressed to Tribunal Claim	4,659	53	7,100	63	6,990	64	7,311	63	9,307	71	6,699	70	42,066	64
Dispute Progressed to Tribunal Claim	2,876	33	2,834	25	2,775	25	2,735	23	2,477	19	1,561	16	15,258	23
Total	8,778		11,202		10,990		11,641		13,169		9,603		65,383

15,258 (23%) of Early Conciliation cases closed in April to September 2018 led to an Employment Tribunal claim. By the end of September, 22% of these cases were settled by Acas conciliators or withdrawn with a further 72% still in progress as shown in Table 4 which provides a further breakdown of the progress of these cases. Table 3, below, shows the number of ET1 cases received and input by Acas in this period.

Table 3: Employment Tribunal (ET1) Cases by Track, Apr 2018 - Sep 2018

ET1 Cases Received		April	May	June	Jul	Aug	Sep	Total
ET1s Received following on from EC notification	Fast	958	823	756	855	685	597	4,674
	Standard	1,188	981	982	1,192	817	701	5,861
	Open	1,309	1,254	1,181	1,310	1,056	939	7,049
	All	3,533	3,162	2,984	3,449	2,638	2,305	12,540

ET1s Received without prior EC notification	Fast	37	33	19	39	29	16	173
	Standard	26	35	22	19	22	24	148
	Open	15	36	24	34	29	28	166
	All	78	104	65	92	80	68	487
Total		3,533	3,162	2,984	3,449	2,638	2,305	18,071

These are split into two groups, 'ET1 Received following on from EC notification' relate to cases that had not been resolved at the Early Conciliation stage and progressed to tribunal. The second part of the table refers to cases without a clear link to an Early Conciliation notification such as cases in which one of the exemptions applies as set out in Regulation 3(1) of SI 254/2014.

Table 4: Current Status of EC Cases Closed in Apr 2018 - Sep 2018 for which an ET1 has been submitted

Current Conciliation Case Status where ET1 submitted, Apr 2018 - Sep 2018	Apr		May		Jun		Jul		Aug		Sep		Year to Date
	No.	%	No.	%	No.	%	No.	%	No.	%	No.	%	No.	%
Dispute in progress	1,561	54	1,832	65	1,941	70	2,113	77	2,106	85	1,432	92	10,985	72
COT3 Settlements so far achieved	772	27	584	21	507	18	413	15	230	9	87	6	2,593	17
Withdrawals following Acas intervention	221	8	211	7	154	6	110	4	77	3	27	2	800	5
Determined already by Employment Tribunal	322	11	207	7	173	6	99	4	64	3	15	1	880	6
Total ET1 cases	2,876		2,834		2,775		2,735		2,477		1,561		15,258

The above table represents the ET1-stage outcomes to date of those EC cases which completed the EC stage in 2018-19 and where claimants subsequently initiated tribunal proceedings. The number of corresponding ET1 cases may differ from these figures because some individual EC notifications link to multiple tribunal cases and sometimes several EC notifications will be represented within one tribunal case.

Notes:

It is not possible to be absolutely precise about the number of individuals because some people submit more than one notification, usually either because they need to name more than one respondent or in an attempt to be precise about the respondent's name (legal identity).
Whereas Table 1 and Table 3 set out the total number of cases that were received per quarter, Tables 2 and 4 give the number of cases which reached an EC-stage outcome in that period - drawing in many cases which were received in previous quarters and excluding cases which have not yet reached an EC-stage outcome. So, although there will be considerable overlap in terms of the cases involved, the total number of cases differs.