The Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (Acas) is launching a new service that will attempt to solve workplace grievances before they reach the employment tribunal system.

Acas has been awarded £37m in government funding to expand its telephone advice line and to set up a ‘pre-claim conciliation service' that it is hoped will resolve employment disputes before they go to a tribunal, thus saving money for all parties involved. The new changes will be implemented on April 6th.

Initially the new service will only deal with unfair dismissal and discrimination cases but will expand to other issues such as redundancy payments and illegal wage deductions.

"There are benefits in this new service to the individual employee and employer, and to the taxpayer and the public purse. From the pilot evidence, we are looking at about £1,000 per case across the board," said Jane Bird, Acas's programme manager.

With unemployment in the UK standing at over 2m the amount of redundancy issue enquires has incresed - Acas recently revealed that these now account for 35% of calls to its advice helpline and that the number of employment tribunal cases it received for conciliation last month rose 29%.