You should only fill in an Early Conciliation Notification form if you are certain you want to make a claim to an employment tribunal.

Before you do anything else you should consider using your organisation’s appeals or grievance procedure if they have one, or letting it run its course if you’ve already started it, unless this means that you miss the deadline for putting in a tribunal claim. Putting your claim in before giving your organisation the chance to resolve it can reflect badly on your case at tribunal, and if you’ve already lodged an appeal or a grievance the Acas conciliator will need to wait for it to finish before Early Conciliation can start.

If you’re not completely sure what to do next, or you need some information, advice or guidance about the employment issues you are facing you can talk to an Acas Helpline adviser on: 0300 123 1100.

If you are the representative of a single claimant rather than a group of claimants (a ‘group’ means two or more claimants), you should ask him or her to fill in the notification form themselves. This is designed to underline the informality of the Early Conciliation process and to make clear that individuals are not obliged to have a representative in order to gain access to it. There is space on the form for representative details to be added where the claimant chooses to do so, and in such cases, we will liaise direct with that named representative.

You can find more detailed information and guidance on Early Conciliation here: Early Conciliation Explained

Please Note: When you submit your form it will automatically be acknowledged via email if an email address is provided, or by letter if not. The acknowledgment will include the claimant’s name, the date of receipt and the name given for the respondent. This means that you don’t need a screenshot of your form or to send in a hard copy form to retain these details because your acknowledgement provides this for you.

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