Grievance Response Pack UK | ACAS Code & ERA 1996

A grievance procedure is the route an employer follows when an employee raises a formal concern about their treatment, their working conditions, a colleague or a management decision. The response letter pack is the paper trail that runs alongside that procedure: every stage of the ACAS Code expects something in writing, and these are those documents. Think of the procedure as the choreography and the letters as the record that proves you danced it correctly.

People often confuse a grievance with a disciplinary, and the two pull in opposite directions. A disciplinary is the employer raising an issue about the employee's conduct or performance; a grievance is the employee raising an issue about the employer. The letters differ accordingly. A grievance acknowledgement reassures and schedules; a disciplinary invitation puts an allegation. Mixing the templates is a classic own goal, because the tone and the statutory expectations are not the same.

This pack covers the formal route, which begins once informal resolution has failed or is plainly inappropriate. It includes the acknowledgement of receipt, the invitation to the grievance meeting with the statutory right to be accompanied spelled out, the outcome letter that records the decision and the reasons, and the appeal acknowledgement and outcome. Each letter is drafted to sit on top of your existing contracts and staff handbook rather than contradict them, which is where most home-made templates fall down.

The governing instrument is the ACAS Code of Practice on Disciplinary and Grievance Procedures, issued under section 199 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992. The current version came into force on 11 March 2015, replacing the 2009 Code. The Code is not law in the strict sense, and a breach does not by itself create a claim. Its bite comes from section 207A of the same Act: where an employer unreasonably fails to follow the Code, an employment tribunal can increase any award it makes by up to 25%, and the compensatory award is usually the largest part of a payout. The case of Rentplus UK Ltd v Coulson shows the appeal tribunal upholding the full 25% uplift where a grievance and redundancy process was treated as a sham, so the figure is real, not theoretical.

The right to be accompanied is a hard statutory entitlement, not a courtesy. Under section 10 of the Employment Relations Act 1999, a worker invited to a grievance hearing may bring a fellow worker, a trade union official or a certified union representative. There is no right to bring a solicitor, and an employer is not obliged to allow one unless the contract says so. The pack reminds the employee of this right in the meeting invitation, because forgetting to mention it is precisely the kind of procedural slip the Code penalises.

A few overlapping rules matter. The Equality Act 2010 applies where the grievance touches discrimination, harassment or victimisation, which raises the stakes considerably. Where a grievance and a disciplinary overlap, the Code allows you to deal with them concurrently or to pause one, and our covering notes flag that judgment call. For the authoritative wording, employers should read the ACAS statutory Code of Practice on disciplinary and grievance procedures in full before running a complex case. Captain.Legal also offers a UK dismissal letter template built to section 98 ERA 1996 for situations where a grievance ends in termination.

The most common trigger is a written complaint landing on a manager's desk, often after months of informal grumbling. Once an employee puts a grievance in writing, the clock and the Code are engaged, and a casual reply by email will not protect you. The pack gives you the acknowledgement to send within a day or two, which signals that the matter is being taken seriously and buys time to arrange a proper meeting.

You also need it when the complaint is about the employee's own line manager. The Code expects the grievance to be heard by someone who is not the subject of it, so the documents are written to be reassigned to a different manager without rewriting from scratch. Another frequent scenario is a grievance raised mid-disciplinary, where an employee facing a warning suddenly complains about the process. Ignoring that grievance because it looks tactical is a mistake, since the tribunal will still ask whether you addressed it.

Two edge cases deserve attention. First, where the grievance alleges discrimination or harassment under the Equality Act 2010, the response needs to show you investigated rather than dismissed it, because injury-to-feelings awards have no cap. Second, a collective grievance raised by a recognised trade union on behalf of several employees falls outside the individual Code route and should follow your collective process instead. The pack is built for individual grievances, which cover the overwhelming majority of cases an SME will face. For staff who have just started, you may also want the statement of written particulars template under section 1 ERA 1996 to confirm the terms a grievance might dispute.

• The grievance acknowledgement letter confirms receipt within a short, defensible window and sets out the next steps without prejudging anything. It avoids the common error of agreeing or disagreeing with the complaint before the meeting, which can later be read as a closed mind.
• The invitation to the grievance meeting names the date, time and place, identifies who will hear the matter, and states the statutory right to be accompanied under section 10 of the Employment Relations Act 1999. It gives the employee enough notice to arrange a companion, which the Code treats as essential.
• The grievance outcome letter records the decision, the reasons behind it and any action the employer will take. It explains the right to appeal and the deadline for doing so, because an outcome letter that omits the appeal route is the single most cited procedural gap at tribunal.
• The appeal acknowledgement and appeal outcome letters complete the process. The appeal should be heard, where possible, by someone more senior who was not involved in the original decision, and the documents prompt that reassignment.
• The investigation and meeting note prompts help managers keep contemporaneous records, which tribunals prefer over witness recollection months later. Good notes are dull and they win cases.

England and Wales are the core jurisdiction for this pack, and the ACAS Code applies directly. Employment tribunals in England and Wales routinely apply the section 207A uplift, and the procedural expectations are well settled through cases such as Cadogan Hotel Partners Ltd v Ozog, which confirmed that a grievance must be in writing for the uplift to bite. Employers here should treat the written trail as the spine of any defence.

Scotland shares the same statutory framework, since employment law is reserved to Westminster rather than devolved. The ACAS Code, the Employment Rights Act 1996 and the Equality Act 2010 all apply identically. The practical difference is the tribunal system: cases are heard by the Employment Tribunals (Scotland), and any onward appeal goes to the Employment Appeal Tribunal sitting in Edinburgh. The letters themselves need no change.

Northern Ireland is the genuine exception and the pack should be adapted before use there. Northern Ireland has its own statutory regime under the Employment (Northern Ireland) Order 2003 and uses the Labour Relations Agency Code of Practice on Disciplinary and Grievance Procedures, not the ACAS Code. The statutory three-step grievance procedure that Great Britain abolished in 2009 still has echoes in the NI framework, and claims are heard by the Industrial Tribunal rather than an employment tribunal. Do not use the England and Wales letters unaltered in Northern Ireland. If you employ staff across the border, the UK redundancy notice letter template under ERA 1996 carries the same jurisdictional caveat and should be reviewed for the same reason.

You start by selecting the letter that matches the stage you are at, because the pack is sequential rather than a single document. From there you enter the employee's name, the date their written grievance was received and the name of the manager who will hear it, taking care that this person is not the subject of the complaint. The template then guides you through the meeting logistics, prompting you to insert a date that gives reasonable notice and to confirm the right to be accompanied in plain terms.

When you reach the outcome letter, you record the decision and, more importantly, the reasoning, since a bare "your grievance is not upheld" is the kind of phrasing that draws an uplift. The template prompts you to summarise what was investigated and why you reached your conclusion. Finally you complete the appeal correspondence if the employee challenges the outcome, reassigning the hearing to a more senior manager where you can. Throughout, the prompts tell you which choices carry risk, so you are not guessing. Employers handling a fixed-term hire alongside this can pair it with the fixed-term employment contract template for UK employers.

The most expensive mistake is treating the grievance informally when the employee has raised it formally. A reassuring chat in the corridor is not a process, and a tribunal cannot weigh a conversation that left no record. Employers also routinely let the matter drift, allowing weeks to pass without an acknowledgement or a meeting date, which the Code reads as unreasonable delay. Another frequent error is having the wrong person hear the grievance, usually the very manager the complaint is about, which contaminates the whole exercise from the start.

Two further traps catch employers who think they are being thorough. The first is the outcome letter that announces a decision without explaining the reasons or mentioning the right to appeal; that omission alone can support an uplift. The second is mishandling a grievance that overlaps with an ongoing disciplinary, where employers either ignore the complaint as tactical or freeze everything indefinitely. The Code permits running the two concurrently or pausing one, but it expects a reasoned choice, not paralysis. Where discrimination is alleged under the Equality Act 2010, dismissing the complaint without a genuine investigation is the costliest error of all, because those awards are uncapped.