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Hello, my name is***** am a qualified lawyer and I will be assisting you with your question today. What do you think the outcome would be if you were to proceed with the investigation, is it serious enough for a dismissal?
A constructive dismissal claim can be quite difficult to win as it is entirely down to you to prove that the required elements for a successful claim were satisfied. On the other hand if you were claiming unfair dismissal, where you were dismissed, it is entirely down to the employer to prove that they had a fair reason for dismissal and had followed a fair procedure. So if there I a likelihood that you may be dismissed it may be better tactically to allow that and then claim unfair dismissal rather than resign and claim constructive dismissal.
In the meantime you have nothing to lose by raising a grievance over the prolonged suspension because as per the ACAS Code of Conduct a suspension should only be as long as it is reasonably necessary and not be unnecessarily prolonged. A year is a very long time so they would need pretty strong grounds to justify such a period of suspension. You may also continue negotiating with them over the settlement amount in the meantime.
This is your basic legal position. I have more detailed advice for you in terms of the further options you have on negotiating and getting a settlement once your employment has terminated, which I wish to discuss so please take a second to leave a positive rating for the service so far (by selecting 3, 4 or 5 stars) and I can continue with that and answer any further questions you may have. Don’t worry, there is no extra cost and leaving a rating will not close the question and we can continue this discussion. Thank you
There is nothing stopping you from resigning now and claiming constructive dismissal I just had to make you aware that traditionally this is a harder claim to win than unfair dismissal. In any event this is not the last chance to negotiate something with them, even if you were to resign and leave you will have to continue negotiating before you are able to make a claim, so there is still a chance that you would walk away with an improved settlement rather than having to make a full claim against them.
Thank you. A new feature in the employment tribunal’s claims process is mandatory early conciliation with ACAS. This requires prospective claimants to notify ACAS and provide details of their intended claim and they would then try to negotiate between the claimant and respondent to seek out of court settlement in order to avoid having to take the claim to the tribunal. It is possible for the parties to refuse to engage in these negotiations, or that they are unsuccessful, in which case they would get permission to proceed with making the claim in the tribunal.
If negotiations are initiated and settlement is reached, then the claimant would agree not to proceed with the claim in return for the agreed financial settlement.
The conciliation procedure and the form to fill in can be found here:
https://ec.acas.org.uk/Submission/SingleClaimantPage
In terms of the time limits within which a claim must be presented, the early conciliation process places a ‘stop’ on that and the time between notifying ACAS and them issuing permission to proceed with the claim would not count for the purposes of these time limits.