The legal status of the statement

Although the statutory statement of employment particulars is often referred to as a “contract”, it is not actually a contract of employment. The statement is evidence of the terms of the contract, but not necessarily conclusive evidence.

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 did not mention an enhanced redundancy policy and the employer argued that this meant the policy must be non-contractual. The tribunal disagreed. Although a statutory statement of employment particulars is supposed to include the core contract terms, it is only evidence of those terms.