Procedure

The first 48 hours after a settlement agreement lands

Most people meet their first settlement agreement in a meeting they did not know was coming, and leave it holding a document and a date. The date is usually the thing they think about for the next two days. It is almost the only thing on the table that does not matter very much.

Here is what to do instead, in order.

Hour one: do not agree to anything, including agreeing that you agree

The meeting where a settlement is raised is designed to produce a reaction. Sometimes deliberately, more often just because that is what meetings do. The useful response is narrow: thank them, say you will read it properly, and ask for the offer in writing if it was not already.

What you should not do in that meeting, however reasonable it feels:

• Resign. It changes the legal position fundamentally and it hands away the thing you are being paid for. If you resign, there is usually no dismissal, and a large part of what the settlement was buying evaporates.
• Agree the figure verbally. You have not read the document. The figure is not the deal; the document is the deal.
• Say you are happy with it. It is a natural thing to say to someone who has just been awkward at you for fifteen minutes, and it is quoted back later.
• Sign anything described as “just a formality”. Nothing in this process is a formality.

None of that is adversarial. It is the same answer you would give to any contract handed across a table.

Hours two to six: read the whole thing

Read it once for shape and once for numbers. On the first pass you are looking for the structure: what is being paid, when, in exchange for what, and what you are agreeing not to do afterwards.

On the second pass, check the arithmetic against your own documents:

1. Notice. Is the notice period the one in your contract, or a statutory minimum applied by someone who did not check? These are often different and the difference is real money.
2. Holiday. Is accrual calculated to the termination date or to the date the letter was written?
3. Bonus or commission. Anything already earned is contractual. Its absence from the document is not an oversight you have to accept.
4. The split. How much is described as contractual and how much as compensation? The two halves are taxed under completely different rules, and two offers with the same total can be worth different amounts.
5. Conditions on payment. Return of property, a reaffirmation certificate after termination, no breach of confidentiality. These turn a payment date into a payment date plus a checklist.

Errors at this stage are common and they are the easiest thing in the whole process to get corrected, because they are factual rather than negotiable.

Hour six: work out which clock you are actually on

This is the part people skip, and it is the one that occasionally costs someone their entire position.

The date in the letter is a commercial deadline. There is no statute behind it, nothing happens to you if it passes, and an offer that is not accepted simply lapses. The Acas Code of Practice recommends allowing at least ten days to consider a settlement agreement, and an employer who gives less is the one taking a risk — because too little time can cost them the protection on the conversation.

Underneath that soft deadline, though, hard ones are running. Employment tribunal time limits are usually three months, they run from the dismissal or the act complained of rather than from anything in the agreement, and negotiating does not pause them. Acas early conciliation is compulsory before a claim and does pause the clock — but only once you have notified Acas.

So the question for hour six is not “when do I have to sign”. It is “how long have I got before the claim I am being paid to give up stops existing”. If those two dates are anywhere near each other, that changes what you do next.

Day one, evening: send one email

Not a negotiation. A holding email that does three things and stops.

• Confirms you are considering the offer and have not rejected it.
• Asks for until a specific date, giving the reason as the Acas Code’s recommendation of at least ten days.
• Says you want to take the independent advice the agreement requires, and that the adviser needs time to read it.

That last point is the one that works, because it is not about you. A settlement agreement does not stop you bringing a claim unless the six conditions in section 203(3) of the Employment Rights Act 1996 are met, and one of them is that you received advice from a relevant independent adviser. Your employer needs that advice to happen. Asking for enough time to obtain it is asking them to let their own document work.

Keep the email to five sentences. Do not include your view of the merits, your feelings about the process, or a counter-offer. Each of those starts a different conversation, and none of them helps you get the extra week.

Day two: get it in front of someone who reads these weekly

A straightforward sign-off is an appointment, not a project, and firms that do this work in volume routinely turn it round the same day or the next. Your employer will usually contribute to the cost by naming an amount in the agreement — it is a strong convention rather than a right, and the sentence worth saying on that first call is a request to cap the fee at whatever the contribution is.

Turn up with:

• the agreement, your contract and your last three payslips
• the date you were given
• any grievance or disciplinary correspondence
• the two-part breakdown from the calculator, if you have run it

That last one changes the first ten minutes of the call from data gathering into advice, which on a fixed fee is not a small thing.

What you are actually deciding

By the end of the second day you are not deciding whether to sign. You are deciding which of two questions you want answered: what does this document do to me, which is the statutory advice and is what the employer’s contribution pays for, or is this figure right, which requires someone to form a view on your claim and is a different piece of work.

Both are legitimate. They cost different amounts and take different lengths of time, and the single most useful thing you can do before you pick up the phone is know which one you are asking for.

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