Chris Bryden & Michael Salter examine the award of uplifts in employment tribunals
The Employment Act 2002 (EA 2002) introduced the prospect of an uplift or reduction percentage to awards in relevant claims to encourage compliance with the relevant procedure. Although the disciplinary and grievance procedures contained within that Act have since been repealed, the principle still remains albeit now contained within section 207A of the Trade Union Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992. The “new” code, introduced in 2009, empowers the tribunal to adjust a relevant award by up to 25% if there has been an unreasonable failure to comply with the appropriate procedure.
Challenging terms
A recent research paper: Evaluation of the Acas Code of Practice on Disciplinary and Grievance Procedures (2011, Nilufer Rahim, Ashley Brown and Jenny Graham (NatCen)), based on in-depth interviews of 36 employers, employees and their representatives, noted that terms used within the code, such as “reasonable”, were considered challenging to implement consistently and for this reason, “doubts were expressed about the accessibility of the code to groups such as smaller employers”.
While the report
