Evaluating a New Proactive Approach to Conciliation

The Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (Acas) commissioned IES to carry out an evaluation of a six-month pilot currently running in Manchester, Newcastle and Nottingham offering a new proactive approach to conciliation. This pilot service is called pre-claim conciliation (PCC) and it aims to identify disputes that are likely to become employment tribunal claims and resolve them before they enter the tribunal system. The overall aim of the evaluation was to assess the impact of early intervention in potential tribunal claims on case outcomes and employment relationships and to establish whether the benefits of PCC outweigh the costs.