Here is what it means if you are the one under investigation.
On 30 July 2026 ACAS published a draft of a new statutory Code of Practice on disciplinary and grievance procedures. It is open for public consultation until 11:59pm on 23 September 2026, which leaves about four weeks. If it is approved and laid before Parliament it will replace the Code issued in 2015, and it will be the first full rewrite of that Code since 2009.
The current Code runs to 47 paragraphs. The draft runs to 95.
That doubling is not padding. ACAS has taken material that previously sat in non-statutory guidance, where a tribunal has no obligation to look at it, and moved it inside the Code itself, where a tribunal must. Under section 207 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 an employment tribunal is required to take a relevant provision of the Code into account. Under section 207A it can adjust compensation by up to 25 per cent, in either direction, where a party has unreasonably failed to comply with it.
So the question of what sits inside the Code and what sits outside it is not academic. It decides which arguments have statutory weight in the room.
Most of the commentary published in the last month has been written for employers, telling them what they will need to change. This piece is written from the other chair.
The change everyone is talking about, and why it may help you less than it sounds
The headline is early resolution. The draft says that concerns about conduct or performance are usually best dealt with informally, and it adds a new requirement to the letter inviting a worker to a formal disciplinary meeting. That letter should now state what has already been done to resolve the concern informally, or explain why nothing was done.
That is a genuinely useful development. An invitation letter is the first document a tribunal reads, and it is written before the employer knows how the case will end, which is exactly why it is so often revealing. A letter with an empty answer to that question is a letter that has to be explained later.
Now the qualification, because it is a large one.
Paragraph 23 of the draft says that an informal approach will not be appropriate in every situation, and gives as its example concerns about gross misconduct or other serious issues that could result in dismissal. Read that against the reason most people find this website. If you have been accused of theft, of violence, of falsifying a record, of a safeguarding failure, the employer has a ready answer to the new question. They will write that informal resolution was not appropriate because the allegation was one of gross misconduct, and on the face of the draft they will be right.
The new argument is therefore strongest in the cases where the stakes are lowest, and weakest where they are highest. That is worth knowing before you build a case around it.
Where it does bite is in the middle ground, and the middle ground is bigger than people assume. Attendance and timekeeping. Performance said to be misconduct. A personality clash between a worker and a manager that has been reclassified as insubordination. A three-year-old issue nobody raised at the time. In those cases the question of why nobody simply had a conversation is now a question the employer has to answer in writing, in advance, in a document they will be held to.
The change almost nobody is talking about, and it is the one I would put first
Paragraph 86.
If your chosen companion cannot attend on the date the employer has proposed, the current Code gives you one move. You propose an alternative date, and if it is reasonable and falls within five working days of the original, the employer must postpone. Beyond five working days the statutory right runs out. Employers know this, and some of them use it. A hearing gets listed at short notice, your representative is already committed elsewhere that week, and you are told to attend alone or not at all.
The draft changes the shape of that.
It says first that where a chosen companion is unavailable, the meeting should be postponed. It then adds a new paragraph saying that more than five working days may be reasonable, particularly in cases that might result in dismissal, and reminds employers that they must always act reasonably to avoid dismissing someone unfairly.
This is not ACAS inventing something. It is ACAS finally writing into the Code what the Employment Appeal Tribunal decided in Talon Engineering Ltd v Smith in 2018: the five-day rule sets a floor for the statutory right, not a ceiling on what a reasonable employer does. At present that decision sits in a note bolted onto the front of the Code, outside the numbered paragraphs, easy to miss and easier to ignore. The draft moves it into paragraph 86, where a tribunal must take it into account.
For anyone facing a dismissal hearing with a representative who has a diary, that single paragraph is worth more than the whole early resolution section.
Three smaller changes that will matter in real cases
The informal conversation that turns into a warning. Paragraph 21 says an informal conversation should never by itself produce a formal warning, and goes further: where an employer confirms an informal discussion in writing, it should make sure that note is not later treated as a formal warning. Anyone who has sat opposite an employer producing a two-year-old email as evidence of a live sanction will understand why that sentence was written.
Suspension. The draft narrows the grounds. Suspension should only be considered where it is needed to meet a legal requirement, or where the employer reasonably believes it protects the investigation, the organisation, other staff, or the person under investigation. It should be as brief as possible and kept under review, and the employer should explain in private that it is not a disciplinary sanction. Automatic suspension on receipt of any allegation, which is still standard practice in parts of health, education and financial services, becomes harder to defend.
Disability and language. This is the one I did not expect. Paragraph 14 says that as well as the statutory companion, an employer may need to allow a support worker who knows the worker’s disability, or an interpreter where language is a barrier to taking part properly. Paragraph 81 goes further and says that where someone asks to be accompanied at a meeting where the statutory right does not apply, an investigation meeting for instance, the employer should consider whether allowing it would help. Neither point appears anywhere in the 2015 Code. For disabled workers and for workers whose first language is not English, that is real ground gained.
Where the draft asks more of you
Two places.
Grievances get harder to raise. Under paragraph 63 a written grievance should set out the nature of the concern, how you would like it resolved if you can say, and what you have already tried informally or why you tried nothing. A grievance that says only “I wish to raise a grievance”, which is how a great many of them are still written, now carries a risk it did not carry before. Section 207A cuts both ways, and an employee who unreasonably fails to follow the Code can see an award reduced by up to 25 per cent.
The draft does soften this. Paragraph 64 says a short, clear written explanation is often enough at the outset, and that you should be allowed to add detail later. But short and clear is not the same as vague, and the difference now has money attached to it.
Mediation is the second. The draft gives it a whole new section and says that where mediation is agreed during a formal process, the formal process should be paused. Used properly that is a good thing. Used badly it is a grievance parked for eleven weeks while the clock on your tribunal claim keeps running. Paragraph 94 is the protection worth remembering: mediation is not suitable where a factual decision about statutory rights is needed, or where someone else has to make the decision, or where there is a power imbalance that cannot be safely managed. Being offered mediation is not the same as being obliged to accept it.
What has not changed
The categories of companion are untouched. Paragraph 82 of the draft repeats the position exactly: a fellow worker, an official employed by a trade union, or a trade union representative who is not an employed official and who has been certified by their union as competent to accompany a worker. What the companion may do is also unchanged. Put your case, sum it up, respond on your behalf to what is said, and confer with you during the meeting.
So the basis on which this practice attends hearings is the same before and after.
What this means for you today
Nothing yet, and I would rather say that plainly than dress it up.
The draft has no legal force. The commencement date in the document is still a blank square bracket. The 2015 Code is what governs your hearing next week, and if anyone tells you otherwise they are selling you something. Some of the arguments above are already available under the existing law, notably the postponement point, which comes from a decided EAT case rather than from the draft. Others are not available at all until the new Code is in force.
The one thing you can do now is respond to the consultation. ACAS has said it welcomes contributions from individuals, not only from unions, employer bodies and law firms. Responses go through the form on the ACAS consultation page or to consultations@acas.org.uk, by 11:59pm on 23 September 2026. If you have been through a process where an informal word would have ended it, or where a hearing went ahead because your representative could not make the date, that is exactly the evidence ACAS has asked for. Two hundred words from someone it actually happened to tends to carry further than another submission from a law firm.
Zhan Associates has sent a response to the proposals. We will publish an update when the final Code is laid before Parliament, and a second one when a commencement date is set.
Shakil Dixon | Specialist Workplace Defence Representative | Zhan Associates
Sources. Draft Code of Practice on disciplinary and grievance procedures, ACAS, published 30 July 2026 (paragraph references above are to that draft). Code of Practice on disciplinary and grievance procedures, ACAS, in force 11 March 2015. Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992, sections 199, 207 and 207A. Talon Engineering Ltd v Smith (EAT, 2018). Consultation closes 11:59pm, 23 September 2026.