Before bringing an unfair dismissal claim, an employee must first take part in mandatory early conciliation (EC) via Acas. To facilitate the EC process, the employee’s time limit to bring an unfair dismissal claim (usually 3 months -1 day) is temporarily ‘paused’ during the EC period and any time spent engaged in EC automatically extends their time limit. The EAT has recently held that an employee’s time limit to issue a claim is not automatically extended by any days spent engaged in EC that occurred pre-termination.
R worked in a senior role for a bank. R commenced EC via Acas on 11 February 2023 and her employment was terminated 6 days later on 17 February 2023. The EC process ended on 28 February 2023. R issued an unfair dismissal claim on 30 May 2023 and the employer argued this claim had been brought too late. The employment tribunal agreed and dismissed R’s claim at a preliminary hearing.
R appealed to the EAT. The key issue before the EAT was whether: (1) R’s time limit should be automatically extended by the whole EC period (in which case her claim had been brought in time); or (2) The 6 days of EC which had occurred before R’s termination date should be excluded when calculating the automatic extension of time (in which case her claim had been brought too late).
The EAT dismissed R’s appeal and held that the relevant legislative...
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