The legal status of a statutory statement of particulars

A statutory written statement of employment particulars, issued under section 1 and 2 of ERA 96, is not the contract of employment, but it is evidence of the contract terms. In Allen v TRW Systems [2013] UKEAT/2013/0083/12, employees had to sign to confirm that their statutory statement of employment particulars “accurately reflected the terms of the employment contract”. The statutory statement said nothing about an enhanced redundancy policy and the employer argued that this meant the policy must be non-contractual. The tribunal disagreed, pointing out that although a statutory statement of employment particulars is supposed to include the core contract terms, it is only evidence of those terms. It is not the contract itself. In practice, many contract terms are left out of the statutory statement.