Government publishes response to consultation on Resolving Workplace Disputes

The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) and the then Tribunals Service (now HMCTS) jointly issued a consultation document on 27 January 2011 that set out a series of detailed proposals on how the employment tribunal system should be changed. That consultation closed in April 2011 and the government published its response on 23 November.The chief aims of the consultation were to achieve more early resolution of disputes without the need for tribunals, a swift, user-friendly and effective tribunal system, and to help businesses feel more confident about hiring people. As well as proposing various changes to employment law, the government's response commits to the following action:

• Working to change attitudes to mediation in the workplace and embed it as an accepted part of the dispute resolution process. This will include exploring with large businesses within the retail sector whether and how they might be able to share their mediation expertise with smaller businesses in their supply chain, and piloting the creation of regional mediation networks through the provision of mediation training to a number of representatives from local SMEs.
• Introducing a requirement for all potential tribunal claims to be lodged with Acas in the first instance, to offer parties the opportunity to engage in early conciliation in an attempt to resolve the matter without recourse to an employment tribunal.
• Consulting on the possibility of introducing a "rapid resolution" scheme to provide quicker, cheaper, determinations in low value, straightforward claims as an alternative to the current employment tribunal process. Any such scheme could involve non-judicial determination based only on papers.