Penalties

If the CAC concludes that an employer has failed to comply with the terms of a negotiated agreement or the standard provisions (under regulation 22), the person who brought the complaint can apply to the Employment Appeal Tribunal for a penalty notice. That has to be done within three months from the date of the CAC declaration.

Unless the EAT is satisfied that the reason for the failure was beyond the employer’s control, or there was some other reasonable excuse, it can issue a penalty (regulation 23). The size of the penalty will depend on the gravity of the breach, its duration, the reason for it and the number of employees affected. The maximum penalty is £75,000. So far penalties have ranged from £10,000 at Bournemouth University to £55,000 at Macmillan Publishers.

In both these cases, the complaints were made because, after the employers had failed to conclude a negotiated agreement in the time allowed (see page 33), they then did not to arrange ballots to elect I&C reps as required (regulation 19 (4)). Due to the background circumstances, the EAT took a more serious view and set a higher penalty for Macmillan Publishers in 2007 than it did for Bournemouth University in 2009.

Penalties do not apply to other complaints upheld by the CAC, such as a failure to provide data on employee numbers, or complaints concerning ballots, the identity of negotiating representatives, or information restricted or withheld on confidentiality grounds.