HR letter pack

Most of these go wrong on procedure, not on the facts

An employer who is entirely right about what happened loses anyway if the process around it was wrong, and the letters are where the process is evidenced. A hearing nobody can prove was properly convened is a hearing that did not happen, so the letter is not the paperwork after the decision. It is the decision's foundation.

The Acas Code is not law, and departing from it costs 25 per cent

Section 207A of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 is the whole reason the Code matters. Where the employer unreasonably failed to comply with it, a tribunal may increase any award it makes by no more than 25 per cent. It is not an offence. It is a quarter added to the bill.

And section 207A(3) is the half that is almost never quoted. Where the employee unreasonably failed to comply, the tribunal may reduce the award by up to 25 per cent on the same test. Refusing to attend a properly convened hearing, or resigning and claiming constructive dismissal without ever raising a grievance, sits squarely on that side of it.

An investigation meeting is not a disciplinary hearing

Section 10 of the Employment Relations Act 1999 gives the right to be accompanied where a worker is required or invited to attend a disciplinary or grievance hearing and reasonably requests it. An investigation meeting is neither, so the statutory right does not attach to it.

Which produces two opposite errors, and both are common:

• Refusing a companion at a real disciplinary hearing because it is being called informal. Calling it informal does not make it informal.
• Believing one must be allowed at every fact finding conversation. Statute does not require it. Your own policy might, and if it does, the policy binds you, because departing from your own written procedure is exactly the unreasonable failure section 207A is about.

What the companion may do, and the bit they may not

Section 10(2B) lets the companion address the hearing to put the worker's case, sum it up, and respond on their behalf, and to confer with the worker during it. Section 10(2C) stops them answering questions put to the worker.

So the companion can make the argument and cannot be the witness. That distinction is what gets argued about in the room, usually badly and usually in front of the person whose job is at stake, and it is why the invitation letters here set it out in advance.

The postponement window is five working days with a defined start

If the chosen companion is not available, the worker may propose an alternative time and the employer must postpone, provided the alternative is reasonable and falls before the end of five working days beginning with the first working day after the day the employer proposed. Sections 10(4) and 10(5).

That is a hard window, not a reasonable period, and it has its own compensation attached if it is refused. It is also the reason to propose a hearing date with some room after it rather than the last possible day before a deadline.

The invite has to warn of the outcome it could lead to

If dismissal is a possible outcome and the invitation does not say so, the dismissal that follows is procedurally unfair regardless of how sound the reason was. The worker cannot prepare for a consequence nobody told them about, and preparing is the entire point of being invited in writing rather than called in.

The same logic covers the evidence. The Acas Code expects the worker to have the material the employer is relying on in time to consider it. Producing statements across the table on the day is one of the most common failures and one of the easiest to avoid, and it converts a hearing into an ambush in the eyes of anybody reading the file afterwards.

There is no legal warning ladder

Verbal, first written, final written, dismissal is a convention. No statute requires any particular number of warnings, and none sets how long one lasts. What binds you is your own policy, so the most useful thing a warning letter can contain is an expiry date and a plain statement of what has to change by when.

A warning with no end date stays on the file forever, and a warning relied on years after it should have lapsed is a dependable way to lose a case you would otherwise have won.

These letters follow the Acas Code as it currently stands. The Code is in consultation until 23 September 2026 and is expected to change. Building to the draft would date them the day the consultation closes whichever way it lands, so this follows the version that is actually in force, and says so on every letter.