Acas Annual Report

Acas has issued its first annual report since the July 2017 Supreme Court judgment declaring employment tribunal fees unlawful (a previous blog post on the possible effects of that decision can be found here).

The report outlines the rapid increase in the number of claims brought and identifies the most frequent employment disputes which are the basis of these claims.

The report for 2017-18 tells us that:

• early conciliation notifications increased from 92,251 in 2016-17 to 109,364;
• tribunal claims received for conciliation increased from 18,647 in 2016-17 to 26,012 albeit the vast majority of these had been through early conciliation first;
• the Acas helpline answered some 783,000 calls with the most frequent claims being discrimination, dismissal, grievances, the national minimum wage and contract disputes;