Letter reconvening disciplinary hearing after adjournment

Occasionally, it may be necessary for a disciplinary hearing to be adjourned where new information comes to light during it. Where this happens, the hearing will then need to be reconvened.

Adjournments

At any point during a disciplinary hearing, the chair may decide that it’s necessary or desirable to adjourn the proceedings. This is usually where new information comes to light that is raised by the employee, such as their making new assertions or putting forward new explanations or defences, and as a result the chair wants to consider that new information more fully or arrange for further investigations to be conducted. Assuming that the new information raised is relevant to the allegations against the employee, it’s likely to be reasonable for the chair to adjourn the hearing to consider it and complete any further investigation. In this situation, the hearing will then be reconvened once that’s been done, and this is the purpose of our Letter Reconvening Disciplinary Hearing after Adjournment. As for how long the adjournment is, that really depends on the complexity of the new information raised and how much further investigation is required. Note that short adjournments of, say, 15 minutes are also useful to allow things to calm down if the employee becomes visibly agitated, angry, distressed or upset at the hearing, but you don’t need our letter for those.

Details of new information and evidence

Our letter follows the same basic format as our Notification of Disciplinary Hearing but there are a number of key differences. Firstly, it refers to the original disciplinary hearing being adjourned and summarises what the new information is that came to light. Not only does this highlight why the hearing was adjourned but also it helps you to establish a robust paper trail. Secondly, as a result of further investigation, there may be some new evidence gathered relating to the allegations, which may include additional documents or witness statements. If there is any new evidence, copies will need to be provided to the employee so that you can rely on it, and they can respond to it, at the reconvened hearing and our letter provides for that option. In this case, do ensure you give the employee sufficient time to consider the new evidence before the reconvened hearing takes place. Likewise, the new evidence may mean you now want to call new witnesses to appear at the reconvened hearing, or the employee might want to call new witnesses, so our letter optionally covers that too.

Right to be accompanied

Our letter confirms that the employee retains the same statutory right to be accompanied as they had at the original disciplinary hearing. However, it doesn’t need to be the same person; they can choose to be accompanied by a different companion if they wish. Our letter asks them to confirm the name of their companion if it’s to be a different person. To ensure consistency, the reconvened hearing should be chaired by the same person who chaired the original disciplinary hearing, and ideally there should be the same minute taker.