Free tool
Position Review
A structured review of how your employer has handled your disciplinary, grievance or appeal, measured paragraph by paragraph against the ACAS Code of Practice on disciplinary and grievance procedures, 11 March 2015.
It takes around fifteen minutes. You will need the letters you have been sent. Where you do not know an answer, say so. Not knowing is itself a finding, and the review records it as something to ask for rather than guessing at it.
Nothing you type here leaves this device. The review runs entirely inside your browser. No answers are sent to us, stored on a server, or seen by anyone unless you choose to share the report yourself.
That also means nothing is saved. If you close this page before finishing, you will need to start again.
There is nothing to sign up for and no email address is required. You will see the full report on screen at the end whether or not you contact us.
Your situation
Useful to have open
Your contract or offer letter, and a recent payslip.
Length of service is worth getting right rather than estimating. Take the start date from the contract, and count continuously from it, including any period where you transferred with a business or changed role without a break. Service length affects which routes are open to you and it is the sort of thing people habitually round down.
Only useful if you print this for your own records. It stays on your device and is not needed for the review.
The allegations
Work from the letters, not from memory
Find everything your employer has sent you and put it in front of you before you fill this in:
- The notice of investigation, or the invitation to an investigatory meeting
- The suspension letter, if you were suspended
- The invitation to the disciplinary hearing
- The outcome letter, if a decision has been issued
Copy the allegations across word for word from the letter. Not from memory, and not from what a manager said to you in a corridor. Two reasons. Stress reliably distorts recall of exact wording while leaving people confident they have it right, and the wording in the letter is the case you are actually answering.
Watch for wording that shifts between one letter and the next. A charge that grows between the investigation notice and the hearing invitation, or one that arrives at the hearing having never appeared in writing at all, is a point in itself. Note both versions.
Use one box per allegation even where the letter runs several together. Bundled allegations are harder to answer and separating them out is usually the first genuinely useful thing anyone does with a case.
Paragraph 9 of the 2015 Code requires the employer to give you enough information about the alleged misconduct and its possible consequences to enable you to prepare an answer.
The employer's process
Useful to have open
The same letters, plus two things people often forget they can get: your employer's disciplinary policy, usually in the staff handbook or on the intranet, and any minutes or notes of meetings you have attended.
"Not sure" is a real answer and it costs you nothing. It scores neither way. Every one you record becomes a specific disclosure request in Stage 9, which is more useful to you than a guess. Nobody expects an employee to know whether the investigating manager and the deciding manager consulted each other.
Answer about what happened, not about what you think should have happened. This section is a record, and its value comes from being accurate rather than from being favourable.
This is the part that carries the review.
Evidence you hold
Read this before you tick anything
Tick only what you can put your hands on now. Not what you think exists somewhere in your employer's systems, which belongs in the box at the bottom of this stage.
Access to work accounts and work devices is frequently withdrawn without notice, particularly on suspension, and it usually happens before anyone tells you. If material relevant to your case sits only there, ask for it in writing now.
Ask, do not take. Removing or forwarding employer material you are not authorised to hold can become a fresh allegation, and a serious one, entirely separate from what you are already facing. It has ended cases that were otherwise winnable. Request copies of the documents about your own case through the process instead, in writing, and keep the request.
CCTV, swipe records, rota data, an email you were removed from. Naming it now is what makes a disclosure request specific enough to be difficult to refuse.
Mitigation and consistency
Useful to have open
Appraisals, your sickness record, any occupational health report, and any training record relevant to what you are accused of doing wrong.
Most people under-report this stage. Mitigation gets left out because it sounds like excuse-making, and consistency gets left out because it sounds like pointing at someone else. Neither is true. Paragraph 4 of the 2015 Code requires employers to act consistently, and paragraphs 19 to 21 set out the warning structure that normally precedes a dismissal. A decision that engages with neither is a decision with a gap in it.
Consistency is the argument employers find hardest to answer, and it is the one most often left out because people assume it sounds like deflection. It is not. Paragraph 4 of the 2015 Code requires employers to act consistently.
Health, caring responsibilities, length of clean record, provocation, workload, training you never received, anything you raised that was not answered.
Dates and deadlines
Take these from the letters
Do not work from memory here. The outcome letter carries your appeal deadline and the invitation carries your hearing date.
The relevant date is the one people most often get wrong. If you have been dismissed it is normally the last day of your employment, which is not the date of the hearing, not the date the letter arrived, and not the date you were told verbally. Where notice was given or paid in lieu, the distinction can move the date by weeks.
Leave blank anything that has not happened yet. If you are not certain of a date, put your best one in and treat everything that follows from it as indicative, which it is in any event.
Deadlines in this work are unforgiving and they are the one thing worth getting onto paper tonight.
Used to work out your postponement window under section 10(4) to (5) of the Employment Relations Act 1999.
Take it from the letter. Appeal windows are set by your employer's own policy, not by statute, so there is no standard period to assume.
The relevant date. It is what fixes your tribunal time limit, and it is not the date you read this.
ACAS Code review
Where your position stands
What is missing
What to do next
Keep this
Nothing here has been saved. Print the report or copy it into a document of your own before you close the page.
If you would like a second pair of eyes on it
A free fifteen minute consultation is available, in confidence and with no obligation. You will be told plainly where you stand, including where the answer is that you do not need representation. Published fees for every service are set out on the services page and are confirmed in writing before any work begins.
This review is not legal advice and does not predict an outcome. It records how your employer's process compares with the ACAS Code of Practice on disciplinary and grievance procedures dated 11 March 2015, which is the Code currently in force. A draft revised Code was published on 30 July 2026 and is not in force. A failure to follow the Code does not of itself make an employer liable, though a tribunal will take the Code into account and may adjust an award by up to twenty five per cent for an unreasonable failure to comply, in either direction. Time limits shown are indicative. Confirm any limit before relying on it, and take advice on your own facts.
The checklist in full
What this review checks
All 32 checkpoints, grouped by the part of the process each one tests, and the paragraphs of the ACAS Code of Practice on disciplinary and grievance procedures 2015 that each group rests on. Nothing here is held back for the tool. If you would rather work through it on paper, or simply want to know what a procedural review looks like before deciding whether to run one, this is the whole of it.
Notification and notice
ACAS Code 2015, paragraphs 9 to 11
- Were the allegations put to you in writing?
- Did the letter explain the possible consequences, including that dismissal was in prospect?
- Were you given the written evidence, including any witness statements, with the invitation?
- Were you given reasonable time to prepare before the hearing?
Investigation
ACAS Code 2015, paragraphs 5 to 7
- Was there an investigation before the disciplinary stage?
- Were you interviewed as part of that investigation?
- Were the people you named as relevant witnesses actually spoken to?
- Was the investigation carried out by someone different from the person hearing the disciplinary?
- Was the investigation completed without unreasonable delay?
Suspension
ACAS Code 2015, paragraph 8
Only applies if this happened to you. The tool asks first and skips the group if it did not.
- Were you told in writing that suspension is not a disciplinary sanction?
- Has the suspension been reviewed, rather than simply left running?
- Were alternatives to suspension considered, such as a temporary move or different duties?
- Have you remained on full pay throughout?
Right to be accompanied
ACAS Code 2015, paragraphs 13 to 17 and 35 to 39; Employment Relations Act 1999, section 10
- Were you told in writing that you could be accompanied?
- Was your choice of companion accepted?
- If your companion could not make the date, were you offered a postponement?
- Was your companion allowed to put your case, sum it up, and confer with you during the hearing?
Conduct of the hearing
ACAS Code 2015, paragraph 12
- Was the evidence against you gone through at the hearing?
- Were you able to set out your case fully and answer the allegations?
- Were you able to ask questions and put points about what witnesses had said?
- Did the person hearing it appear to be approaching it with an open mind?
Decision and sanction
ACAS Code 2015, paragraphs 18 to 24
- Were you given the decision in writing?
- Did the decision give reasons, rather than simply stating the outcome?
- Was the mitigation you put forward addressed in the decision?
- Was consistency with how others have been treated addressed?
- If dismissed for gross misconduct, was a full process followed before the decision?
- Does your employer’s policy list this conduct as gross misconduct?
Appeal
ACAS Code 2015, paragraphs 26 to 29
- Were you told you had a right of appeal?
- Was, or will, the appeal be heard by someone not previously involved?
- Was the appeal heard without unreasonable delay?
- Were you told you could be accompanied at the appeal?
- Were you given the appeal outcome in writing?
How to read a No. A single No is not a finding that your dismissal was unfair, and this review does not say that it is. A failure to follow the Code does not by itself make an employer liable to proceedings, although an employment tribunal will take the Code into account and may adjust an award by up to twenty five per cent for an unreasonable failure to comply. What a No gives you is a specific, sourced point you can put on the record, which is worth considerably more than a general sense that the process was unfair. Every reference above is to the ACAS Code of Practice on disciplinary and grievance procedures dated 11 March 2015, which is the version in force. The revised Code published in draft on 30 July 2026 is not in force and is not used.