What happens at a disciplinary hearing

Your employer must carry out any necessary investigation without unreasonable delay, then notify you in writing that there is a case to answer. That notification has to contain enough information about the alleged misconduct and its possible consequences for you to prepare, and it would normally include copies of the written evidence and any witness statements, along with the time and place of the hearing and your right to be accompanied.

The Code does not set a number of days. It requires the meeting to be held without unreasonable delay while allowing you reasonable time to prepare your case. Two working days with a hundred pages of evidence is not reasonable time, and saying so in writing before the hearing is far more effective than complaining about it afterwards.

Yes, on two separate bases. You can ask for more time to prepare where the notice given is not reasonable. Separately, if your chosen companion is not available at the proposed time, your employer must postpone to an alternative time you propose, provided it is reasonable and within five working days of the original date.

You should be given a reasonable opportunity to ask questions, present evidence and call relevant witnesses. If you intend to call someone, give advance notice that you are doing so. The same applies to your employer, which is why a witness appearing without warning is worth objecting to on the record.

Anonymised evidence is not automatically unfair, but it is fragile. You are entitled to a reasonable opportunity to raise points about information provided by witnesses, and you cannot do that meaningfully if you cannot see what was said. Push for the substance even where the identity is withheld.

Only with agreement. Covert recording creates its own problems and can itself become a conduct issue. The better protection is a companion taking a full contemporaneous note, and a written record of the representations made on your behalf, which is something we provide as standard.

Tell your employer promptly, in writing, with medical evidence if you have it. Where an employee is persistently unable or unwilling to attend without good cause, the employer can decide on the evidence available, so repeated non-attendance without explanation is genuinely risky. Good cause, properly evidenced, is a different matter.

Yes. After the meeting the employer should decide whether disciplinary or other action is justified and inform you accordingly in writing. A written warning should set out the misconduct, the improvement required and the timescale, how long the warning remains current, and the consequences of further misconduct.

Yes, where a first act of misconduct is sufficiently serious. The Code contemplates this where your actions have had, or are liable to have, a serious or harmful impact on the organisation. It still requires the same fair process, and the reasoning for skipping a stage should be explained.

No, and anyone telling you otherwise is overselling. A failure to follow the Code does not by itself make an employer liable to proceedings. What it does is allow a tribunal to take the Code into account and, where the failure was unreasonable, to increase an award by up to twenty five per cent. Procedure is leverage, not a guarantee.

Often it is worth more, not less. Where the facts are largely accepted, the case turns on categorisation and sanction: whether the conduct really was gross, what mitigation exists, how comparable cases were treated, and whether dismissal sits within the range of reasonable responses. That is an argument, and arguments are better made by someone who has made them before.