Acas Code of Practice on Disciplinary and Grievance Procedures

17 March 2015

The revised Acas Code of Practice on Disciplinary and Grievance Procedures has now come into force.

A judgment made by the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) clarified the rules around reasonable requests to be accompanied at a grievance or disciplinary hearing. It found that workers had the right to be accompanied at these hearings by any companion as long as they were either a trade union official, certified union representative or a fellow worker.

Acas launched a public consultation on the revisions made to the right of accompaniment sections in its disciplinary and grievance Code following the EAT's judgment. A revised draft of the Code was published by Acas in January following the consultation and it has now received parliamentary approval.

Anne Sharp, Acas Chief Executive, said:

"Our Code is designed to help employers, employees and their representatives deal with disciplinary and grievance situations in the workplace. It has been updated to take account of the EAT decision in the case of Toal v GB Oils on the right of accompaniment at disciplinary and grievance hearings. Parliament has now approved the draft revisions made to the Code that we published earlier this year.”