Accompaniment to Meetings

Our employment law solicitors are specialists in advising on your rights to be accompanied at meetings and preparing you to fight your case.

Workers and employees have the right to be accompanied by a fellow colleague or trade union official at disciplinary and grievance meetings. This right also extends to meetings required as part of a statutory process (e.g. flexible working). 

Two recent Court of Appeal cases have considered whether a worker or employee ought to have the right to be accompanied by a lawyer. In both cases, the employees faced serious and potentially career threatening allegations and wanted to be represented by a lawyer at the internal disciplinary hearing. The Court of Appeal ruled in both cases that in certain circumstances, an employee should be allowed to be accompanied by a lawyer at a disciplinary meeting and to refuse might amount to a breach of their human rights. 

If the companion is unavailable at the time proposed for the disciplinary or grievance meeting, there is a statutory duty to rearrange the meeting within five days. If the meeting has to be re-scheduled again, or several times, the employer would be entitled to refuse to postpone the meeting on this basis.

Our Employment Advice Services

Our specialist Employment solicitors can assist you by: –

• Advising you on your rights,
• Helping you to prepare for any formal meeting.

We are able to offer very competitive rates and fixed fee packages for our work. All our initial advice is provided by qualified solicitors and offered for free, so please call us on 0844 800 9860 or request a call back through our website.