Two changes to the UK employment tribunal system, taken together, mean an employer can now face a claim up to nine or ten months after the dispute that caused it, rather than the three months they could previously rely on. From 1 December 2025, Acas Early Conciliation doubled from six weeks to twelve. From 1 October 2026, the standard time limit for bringing most employment tribunal claims doubles from three months to six. For recruitment agencies and umbrella companies, understanding these employment tribunal deadlines is now a record-keeping and evidence question, not just a legal one.
What Is Changing in Acas Early Conciliation?
Under the Employment Tribunals (Early Conciliation: Exemptions and Rules of Procedure) (Amendment) Regulations 2025, the maximum period for Acas Early Conciliation doubled from six weeks to twelve weeks from 1 December 2025. The stated reason is to ease pressure on Acas following a rise in the number and complexity of cases it handles.
The change is not retrospective. Where early conciliation started before 1 December 2025, the previous six-week period still applies. Only notifications made on or after that date get the full twelve weeks.
Early conciliation matters because it pauses the tribunal limitation clock. A claimant contacts Acas before lodging a claim, and the clock stops while conciliation runs. The longer that window, the longer a business waits to learn whether a dispute will progress to a formal claim.
The Employment Tribunal Claim Window Doubles to Six Months
The Employment Rights Act 2025 extends the usual time limit for bringing most employment tribunal claims from three months to six. The new six-month limit applies where the problem at work happens on or after 1 October 2026. Where the problem happened before that date, the existing three-month limit still applies. For breach of employment contract claims, the change commences on 1 October 2026 in England and Wales and on 9 November 2026 in Scotland.
Three months has been the working assumption behind grievance handling, exit documentation and dispute risk assessments across the sector for years. From October 2026, that assumption no longer holds for new disputes.
What the Combined Effect Means for Agencies and Umbrella Companies
Stacked together, the two changes lengthen the practical claim window considerably. A worker now has up to six months to start early conciliation, then up to twelve weeks of conciliation itself, then a further period (typically at least a month) to lodge a claim once the Acas certificate is issued. In practice, that can put the point at which an employer first learns of a formal claim nine to ten months after the underlying incident.
For agencies and umbrella companies managing assignments, exits and terminations at volume, that is a longer tail of potential liability to carry, and a longer period during which evidence, witnesses and records must stay usable.
Capture Witness Evidence Before It Walks Out the Door
The biggest weakness in a nine or ten month exposure window is not lost paperwork. It is lost people. The manager who made the decision, the colleague who saw the incident, the consultant who handled the placement — any of them can resign, move agency or leave the sector long before a claim lands. Memories fade, and a former employee has no obligation to help you build a defence once they have gone.
So treat witness evidence as something to secure at the time of the dispute, not at the point a claim arrives. In practice that means:
- Take a signed, dated witness statement from anyone directly involved in a disciplinary, grievance, dismissal or assignment-ending decision, while the events are fresh and the person is still on the books.
- Record contemporaneous notes of key conversations, decisions and the reasons behind them, so the account does not rely solely on someone’s recall months later.
- Keep current contact details for staff and contractors who may be material witnesses, and update them at exit so you can reach a former colleague if a claim follows.
- Where a crucial witness is leaving, capture their account as part of the offboarding process rather than hoping to track them down later.
A statement taken in the week of the event, signed and stored, is worth far more than a recollection prised out of a reluctant ex-employee eight months on. It also protects the individual who made the decision, whose judgement may later be scrutinised.
How Should Agencies and Umbrella Companies Prepare?
Beyond witness evidence, a few practical steps follow directly from the change:
- Extend document retention periods for disciplinary, grievance and termination records so they comfortably cover a nine to ten month exposure window, not three months.
- Review exit and termination processes now, while the shorter time limit still applies to anything that happened before 1 October 2026, and build the new limit into any process updated after that date.
- Keep a clear, dated log of any informal grievance raised, even where it does not progress formally at the time.
- Remember the response side: once a claim is issued, an employer has 28 days from the date of the tribunal’s letter to file the ET3 response. Miss it and the tribunal can enter a default judgment. That clock runs from the date of the letter, not the day it reaches your post room.
The direction of travel is clear: longer windows, longer memories required, and less tolerance for employers who cannot evidence their decisions. Good record-keeping and timely witness evidence are the difference between defending a claim and conceding one.
FCSA Members are assessed against standards that require exactly this kind of disciplined process. To find an accredited provider or check a business’s status, use the FCSA Members register.
