Written statement of employment particulars 





Under sections 1 and 2 of the Employment Rights Act 1996 (ERA 96), employees with at least one month’s service have the right to a written statement of particulars of their employment. It must be provided no later than eight weeks after the employment begins and must include:


• the names of the employer and the employee;





• the employment start date and the period of continuous employment;





• the scale and rate of pay, pay intervals and the method of calculating pay;





• hours of work and any terms as to normal working hours;





• holiday entitlement and holiday pay, including public holidays, and rights to accrued holiday pay on termination;





• rules about sickness or injury absence and sick pay;





• pensions and pension schemes;





• notice;





• job title or a brief description of duties;





• whether the employment is permanent or, if it is fixed-term, the expected end date;




• place of work, or if the employee is required or permitted to work at various places, confirmation of this and the employer’s address;





• details of disciplinary and grievance procedures, or information about where to find them (See Chapter 10);





• any collective agreements affecting the employment contract;
and




• certain further particulars where the employment is outside the UK for more than a month each year. 





If there are no terms relating to any of the above items, this also must be stated. 





Information about sickness absence procedures, sick pay and pensions can be included in another document, such as a handbook, that the employee has reasonable opportunity to read at work.





If overtime is an essential element of the employment relationship so that employees should normally do it if requested, it must be referred to in the written statement (Lange v Georg Schunemann GmbH [2001] IRLR 244).





Regarding notice requirements, it is currently enough for the statement to refer the employee to the law on the matter (see Chapter 10: Termination with/without notice) or to a collective agreement, as long as there are opportunities to read it at work. 





The right to a written statement is not restricted to new employees. Existing employees can ask for a statement if they do not currently have one. 


If contract terms change, the employer must provide a revised written statement within one month of the change (section 4, ERA 96).
If the employer does not provide a written statement or fails to update the statement following a change to contract terms, the employee can bring a tribunal claim at any time while working for the employer, or within three months (less one day) of the ending of the employment. 



As with all claims except for interim relief (see Chapter 5), no claim can be brought without first submitting an Acas Early Conciliation (EC) Notification Form. For information on Acas EC see Chapter 14.





Compensation of between two to four weeks’ pay capped at £525 per week (2019-20) can be awarded for failure to provide a written statement within two months of the employment start date, but only if another statutory employment claim is successful (Advanced Collection Systems v Gultekin [2015] UKEAT 0377/14/0602). There is no freestanding right to compensation. 


The tribunal can also be asked to make a declaration correcting the written statement (section 12, ERA, 96). For example, in Norman v The National Audit Office [2014] UKEAT/0276/14/BA, civil service union PCS applied for declaratory relief under section 12, ERA 96 when the National Audit Office tried to impose changes to terms and conditions in breach of a collective agreement. The EAT made a declaration reinstating the correct statutory particulars. 



The right to a statement (and to compensation) is available to all employees with at least one month’s service (section 198, ERA 96). The right is available even if the employment ends before eight weeks (Stefanko & Others v Maritime Hotel Limited (in voluntary liquidation) [2018] UKEAT/0024/18/00). 


The government’s Good Work Plan published in December 2018 announced planned changes to the law governing the written statement, to take effect from 6 April 2020. They include the extension of the right to a written statement to all workers from day one of their job (see box below). 


The statutory written statement of employment particulars is not the employment contract, but it is good evidence of the contract. That said, the fact that something is not recorded in the statutory statement of particulars does not stop it being a contract term. For example, in Allen v TRW Systems [2013] UKEAT/2013/0083/12, the claimants had a contractual right to enhanced redundancy pay even though the written statement contained no reference to it (see pages 419-420, Chapter 11).