Statutory Disciplinary And Grievance Procedures – An Update

With the Department of Trade & Industry launching a period of consultation as to whether the Statutory Disciplinary and Grievance Procedures should be abolished, employers are faced with the potential upheaval of more significant changes in this important area of everyday HR practice. In the meantime, we must all soldier on with the current legislation as it stands today, so we thought we would update you with some useful recent cases.

The EAT in Scott-Davies v Redgate Medical Services confirmed that an employee cannot bring a free standing claim in relation to these procedures. In this case the employee had less than one year’s service and was attempting to bring a claim against his employer for breaching the disciplinary procedures. Employers should be aware that employees may, however, seek to argue that the breach of the procedures is evidence of less favourable treatment and may therefore support a discrimination claim (where the employee does not