During the summer, new legislation is due to come into force enabling confidential pre-termination settlement agreements – the ACAS Code of Practice on Settlement Agreements.

This will allow employers and employees to enter into certain confidential discussions about termination of employment, which in ordinary unfair dismissal claims will be inadmissible.

The Code of Practice on Settlement Agreements has now been produced by ACAS which contains some important differences from the draft version. These differences include the following.

• It leaves out the requirement that the initial termination settlement offer must be in writing.
• The template letters have been moved to non-statutory guidance.
• The requirement that an employee must have a minimum of 10 calendar days to consider any offer has been added.
• The expectation that employees should be allowed to be accompanied to settlement meetings has also been added.

Written by Edward Aston

6th June 2013