There are many small injustices in the modern workplace — the quiet, procedural ones that rarely make headlines but shape the daily reality of workers facing disciplinary action. Among the most persistent is the widespread employer practice of giving workers just five working days to appeal a disciplinary outcome. It appears in policy after policy, as if it were a fixed rule of employment law. It is not. It has no statutory basis and no foundation in case law. Yet it is treated as gospel.

This arbitrary deadline has become so normalised that many workers assume it must be legally mandated. In truth, it is nothing more than a managerial convenience that has hardened into convention — a convention that routinely undermines fairness, equality, and access to justice.

At our most recent AGM, Solidarity members recognised this problem and passed a motion committing the union to campaign against the five‑day norm. It is a commitment rooted in both principle and lived experience, and it deserves to be taken seriously.

A Deadline Without a Law

The first and most important fact is this: no UK law requires a five‑day appeal window.
The Employment Rights Act is silent on appeal deadlines.
The Equality Act is silent on appeal deadlines.
ACAS — whose Code of Practice tribunals take into account — does not mandate five days.

ACAS guidance simply states that employees should appeal “as soon as possible or within the time period set out in the employer’s procedure.” That is all. The oft‑quoted “five working days” appears only in non‑binding examples, not in the Code itself. It is not a standard. It is not a requirement. It is not even a recommendation.

ACAS also says nothing about disciplinary minutes — nothing about when they must be provided, nothing about whether the appeal clock should start only after they are received. This omission is striking, because in practice many workers receive the outcome letter before they receive the minutes. They are expected to appeal a decision without access to the record of what was said. No fair‑minded person could consider that reasonable.

Where Five Days Really Came From

If the five‑day rule is not law, where did it come from?
The answer is depressingly simple: HR templates.

For decades, large HR consultancies have produced standardised disciplinary procedures for employers. These templates — designed primarily for managerial convenience — often included a five‑day appeal window. Over time, this figure became embedded in employer‑side “best practice” documents and was repeated so often that it acquired an aura of legitimacy.

But repetition is not justification.
A convention is not a principle.
And managerial convenience is not fairness.

Why Five Days Is Not Enough

A disciplinary outcome can be life‑changing. It may affect a worker’s job, income, reputation, mental health, and future employability. Yet employers routinely expect workers to:

absorb the decision
request and review the minutes
gather evidence
seek union representation
obtain medical or occupational health information
prepare written grounds of appeal

…all within five working days.

This is unrealistic for anyone — and impossible for many.

Workers who are stressed, anxious, or traumatised by the process are disadvantaged.
Workers with caring responsibilities are disadvantaged.
Workers without immediate access to a rep are disadvantaged.
And disabled and neurodivergent workers — who may need more time to process information, gather medical evidence, or communicate effectively — are systematically disadvantaged.

Under the Equality Act 2010, a rigid five‑day deadline is a Provision, Criterion or Practice (PCP). If it places disabled workers at a substantial disadvantage, employers must make reasonable adjustments. Yet most disciplinary policies say nothing about adjustments and instead sometimes rely on vague “management discretion.” , if they mention anything at all. Discretion is not compliance. Adjustments are not optional.

A deadline that cannot flex is a deadline that discriminates. This should be stated clearly in any employer disciplinary policy.

Appeals Are a Safeguard, Not a Sprint

The right to appeal is not an administrative nicety. It is a fundamental safeguard against flawed investigations, procedural errors, bias, and disproportionate sanctions. A right that cannot be exercised meaningfully is not a right at all.

Many unionised workplaces already use 14 days as standard — and nothing collapses. Employers continue to function. Processes continue. Justice is better served. The only thing that changes is that workers get a fair chance to defend themselves.

What ACAS Should Do: Time for the Guidance to Catch Up With Reality

If the five‑day appeal window has become entrenched across UK workplaces, it is partly because ACAS — unintentionally — has allowed ambiguity to flourish. While ACAS does not mandate five days, and does not prohibit longer deadlines, its guidance contains two structural weaknesses that employers routinely exploit:

It offers “five working days” without proper context or caveat.
It says nothing about disciplinary minutes and how that affects when the appeal clock should start.

This silence has consequences. Employers treat the example as a ceiling, not a floor. They treat the absence of rules about minutes as permission to delay them. And they seldom reference Equality Act compliance or its affect on time limits.

Solidarity believes ACAS should now take responsibility for closing these gaps.

1. ACAS should require that the appeal period begins only once the worker has received both the minutes and outcome.

Natural justice demands that workers see the record of what was said. ACAS should state that:

minutes must be provided promptly
the appeal window begins only after the worker receives them and the outcome
delays in providing minutes automatically extend the deadline

3. ACAS should incorporate Equality Act duties directly into its disciplinary guidance.

ACAS should state that:

fixed deadlines are a PCP
employers must consider reasonable adjustments
adjustments are a legal duty, not a matter of discretion
policies must explicitly reference this duty

4. ACAS should recommend a default appeal window of at least 14 calendar days.

This is already standard in many unionised workplaces and poses no operational difficulty.

5. ACAS should update its guidelines to reflect modern, evidence‑based practice.

The five‑day figure comes from outdated HR templates, not fairness. It should be replaced with a timeframe grounded in accessibility, equality, and justice.

ACAS guidance shapes employer behaviour. When the guidance is vague, outdated, or silent on key issues, workers suffer. Solidarity’s position is simple:

ACAS should not merely reflect common practice — it should lead it.
And it should lead it in the direction of fairness, accessibility, and equality.

Solidarity’s Mandate for Change

At our AGM, members passed a motion recognising:

that the five‑day deadline has no legal basis
that it originates from employer‑centric templates
that it disproportionately harms disabled, unwell, and unsupported workers
that meaningful access to justice requires adequate time

The AGM resolved that Solidarity will:

adopt 14 calendar days as our bargaining position
produce guidance for reps on challenging short deadlines
campaign publicly and privately for employers to abandon the five‑day norm
support members who miss deadlines by arguing for extensions on equality and fairness grounds
review disciplinary policies across recognised workplaces and target those with unreasonable appeal windows

This is not symbolic. It is a practical commitment to improving procedural fairness for every worker we represent.

A Call to Employers: Fairness Is Not an Administrative Burden

Employers often defend the five‑day rule by claiming they need “certainty” or “efficiency.” But fairness is not the enemy of efficiency. Rushed appeals create more disputes, more grievances, and more legal risk. If an employer can take weeks or months to schedule a disciplinary hearing, they can wait 14 days for an appeal.

A fair process protects everyone — including the employer.

A Call to Workers: You Deserve Time, Dignity, and Justice

If you are facing a disciplinary outcome, you deserve:

time to understand the decision
time to seek advice
time to gather evidence
time to prepare a proper appeal

You deserve a process that recognises you as a human being, not a box to be ticked.

Solidarity will continue to fight for that — in negotiations, in campaigns, and in every workplace where our members are subjected to unreasonable deadlines.

Five days is not enough.
It never was.
And together, we can change it.

By Pat Harrington

There are tribunal cases that feel like technical disputes about procedure.
And then there are cases like Taylor v Sainsbury’s Supermarkets Ltd — cases that expose the gap between what an organisation thinks it is doing and what an employee is actually experiencing.

A disabled employee.
A supermarket chain.
An absence policy.

And a reminder that the law cares far less about tidy paperwork than it does about lived reality.

The Employee Behind the Case

Mr Taylor worked for Sainsbury’s and lived with ankylosing spondylitis, a long‑term inflammatory condition that can cause severe pain, stiffness and fatigue. It is a condition that fluctuates, and like many disabilities, it doesn’t map neatly onto rigid attendance expectations.

He raised concerns about:

how his absence management was handled
how working hours were allocated
how reasonable adjustments were considered, implemented, and reviewed

On paper, everything looked reassuringly compliant.

✔ Occupational health referrals
✔ Adjustments discussed
✔ Policies in place

But tribunals don’t judge organisations on the neatness of their documentation.
They judge them on what actually happened.

And that’s where this case becomes instructive.

Where Things Began to Fray

1. Absence Triggers Applied Without Flexibility

Sainsbury’s had a standard absence policy with trigger points.
Nothing unusual there.

But Mr Taylor’s condition meant he was more likely to hit those triggers — not because of misconduct, but because of disability‑related flare‑ups.

The tribunal examined not the existence of the policy, but the rigidity with which it was applied.
A trigger point that is neutral on its face can become discriminatory in practice if managers fail to adjust it for someone whose disability makes absence more likely.

This is where many employers stumble:
they treat “consistency” as fairness, when the law requires individualisation.

2. Adjustments Discussed… But Not Embedded

The organisation did discuss adjustments.
But discussion is not the same as implementation.
And implementation is not the same as ongoing review.

The tribunal looked closely at:

whether adjustments were actually put in place
whether they were maintained
whether managers understood them
whether they were revisited when circumstances changed

A reasonable adjustment is not a one‑off event.
It is a living commitment.

3. Working Hours Expectations That Didn’t Reflect Reality

Mr Taylor’s condition affected his stamina and mobility.
Yet expectations around shift patterns and duties did not always reflect the limitations identified by occupational health.

This is a common organisational blind spot:
the gap between what HR agrees, what OH recommends, and what frontline managers actually do on the shop floor.

The tribunal paid attention to that gap.

The Legal Test Employers Forget

One of the most common refrains in tribunal litigation is:

“We followed the process.”

But that is not the legal test.

The tribunal asks two questions:

Did the employee face a disadvantage because of their disability?
Did the employer take reasonable steps to remove or reduce that disadvantage?

Policies are written for the average employee.
Disability law requires employers to think beyond the average.

And that is where Sainsbury’s fell short.

Why This Case Matters

This case is not about bad faith.
It’s about rigidity — the quiet, procedural kind that creeps in when managers are under pressure, when policies are treated as scripts, and when “consistency” becomes a shield against Here’s a version that keeps the spine of the original but reframes it through that Patrick‑style, morally attentive lens — weighing the lessons for both sides of the employment relationship, and foregrounding judgement as a shared, legally consequential practice.

The biggest HR risks rarely come from having the wrong policy.
They come from applying the right policy as if people were identical units on a spreadsheet.

Absence triggers.
Bonus schemes.
Working‑hours expectations.
Return‑to‑work interviews.
Performance metrics.

On paper, these are neutral tools.
In practice, they can quietly — and sometimes catastrophically — disadvantage disabled employees when managers apply them without curiosity, flexibility or context.

From the employee’s side, the lesson is stark:
you can be doing everything “right” and still find yourself penalised by systems designed for an imaginary average worker.
Knowing your rights, flagging barriers early, and documenting the adjustments you need isn’t self‑advocacy as a favour to HR — it’s self‑protection in a landscape where the burden of explanation too often falls on the person already carrying the weight.

From the employer’s side, the message is even clearer:
the organisations that avoid tribunals aren’t the ones with the thickest policy binders.
They’re the ones with leaders who understand when the rules require:

judgement
nuance
humanity
and the courage to deviate from the script

Because good HR has never been about paperwork.
It’s about the quality of decision‑making in the moments where the policy doesn’t quite fit the person in front of you.

And cases like Taylor v Sainsbury’s underline something many leaders still treat as optional:
judgement is not a soft skill.
It is a legal requirement — one that protects employees from harm and employers from the consequences of their own rigidity.

In other words: the law expects humanity.
And so should we.