ACAS Annual Report 2006/2007

The ACAS Annual Report and Accounts for the 12 months to 31st March 2007 was issued on 24th July 2007.

The ACAS Annual Reports home page and index provides links to all ACAS annual reports since 1999.

ACAS has had its budget allocation reduced again (2006/07: £45.2m reduced from £46.3m; and 2007/08: £42m reduced from £44.3m). Although it is too polite to say so in the Annual Accounts, the savings ACAS achieves for employers, employees and employment tribunals may mean that, if fully implemented, these budget cuts will prove counter-productive in the longer run (see notes re House of Commons Committee enquiry into the work of ACAS, January 2006). As last year, the title of the press release accompanying publication of the 2006/07 accounts lends credence to this possibility (2007/07/24 - ACAS Press Release re Annual Report "Demand for Acas services continues to grow").

The proposals in the Gibbons Review of employment dispute resolution in Great Britain of 21st March 2007 for replacement of the ill-fated 2004 statutory dispute resolution procedure arrangements are likely to involve an increased role for ACAS in the near future (see notes at Dispute Resolution/2004 new regulations ).

"Highlights" of the 2006/2007 ACAS annual report include:

• the number of requests for ACAS to intervene in collective disputes and conciliate between the two sides fell slightly again to 912 - recent comparative figures were 952 in year ended 31.3.06; 1,123 in year ended 31.3.05; 1,244 in year ended 31.3.94 and 1,353 in year ended 31.3.03.

• there were 84,039 applications to tribunals compared to 109,712 last year (and 81,833 in the previous year). Unfair dismissal continued to be the largest category of complaint with 35,583 applications (last year - 35,944). Although the Employment Tribunal Service annual report for 2006/07 is not available at the time of writing, the overall government Tribunals Service annual report for 2006/07 was, like the ACAS annual report, published on 24th July 2007.

• the ACAS helpline answered 839,335 (at an average cost of £9.11), compared to last year's 908,553 calls (at an average cost of £7.33 per call) and 880,787 in the previous year (at an average cost of £8 per call). The top three issues were discipline and dismissal, redundancies and lay-offs and contractual matters.

The ACAS individual arbitration scheme attracted only 3 requests in the year ended 31.3.2007 (compared to 6 last year see notes at Arbitration/ACAS new scheme ) .

See also notes at ACAS/functions of/conciliation services .