Free tool
Allegation Response Builder
Work through each allegation on its own: what you accept, what the evidence does and does not show, whether it belongs in the category it has been given, and the questions you will have to answer yourself.
The hearing is the stage where the most is decided, and it is the one part your companion cannot do for you. They can put and sum up your case. Your employer does not have to let them answer the questions put to you.
A long, unfocused statement is easy to set aside. A response that takes each allegation in turn, separates fact from inference, and names its documents has to be dealt with point by point.
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The tool in full
How it takes each allegation apart
Nothing here is held back for the tool. If you would rather work through it on paper, this is the whole of it.
- The allegation exactly as written in the invitation letter, because that letter defines the case your employer has to answer for.
- Your position: disputed, partly accepted or accepted, and exactly what you accept where it is only part.
- What the employer's evidence shows, what it does not show, and the documents that support your account.
- The category test: whether the conduct is among your employer's examples of gross misconduct, whether it was deliberate, careless or a mistake, what harm resulted, and why it may belong one category down. ACAS Code 2015, paragraphs 23 and 24.
- Consistency: whether comparable conduct by others was treated the same way. ACAS Code 2015, paragraph 4.
- Mitigation, kept separate from denial: service, record, training, workload, health, provocation, personal circumstances, what you have put right, and what dismissal would mean.
- The questions to put to the panel, and the hardest questions you should expect to answer yourself. Employment Relations Act 1999, section 10(2C).
- An investigation meeting mode, including the point that the meeting should not by itself result in disciplinary action. ACAS Code 2015, paragraph 7.
Read alongside: Disciplinary hearings and Gross misconduct allegations.
Primary sources. ACAS Code of Practice on disciplinary and grievance procedures 2015, paragraphs 4, 5, 7, 9 to 12, 18, 23 and 24; Employment Relations Act 1999, section 10(2B) and (2C). Every reference to the ACAS Code of Practice on disciplinary and grievance procedures is to the version dated 11 March 2015, which is in force. The revised Code published in draft on 30 July 2026 is not in force and is not used.
What this is. General information about the standard the law and the Code set, for England and Wales. It is not an assessment of your case and it does not predict any outcome. Dates shown are indicative: confirm any deadline before you rely on it.
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