Rachel Rigg has already wandered through Blog vs Behaviour twice. First came the sermon about complaints, investigations and reasoned explanations. Then came the philosophical excursion into whether troublesome data requests amount to a “fishing expedition”. Now the Horsfield Menzies Senior Associate has returned with something even more delicious: an article explaining why workplace disputes should involve earlier resolution, reasonable adjustments, mediation, practical problem-solving and a “less adversarial tone”. Beautiful. Because by the time Horsfield Menzies had finished helping Cepac defend what began as a remarkably simple recruitment dispute, the fucking thing had acquired enough procedural timber to build a small courthouse.
Rigg herself is not someone I accuse of running my Cepac case. That distinction matters, but it does not rescue the comedy. This series is called Blog vs Behaviour, not Rachel Rigg Personally Did Everything. The point is to place Horsfield Menzies’ public teaching beside the behaviour of the firm when an actual dispute arrived at its door. Rigg supplied the syllabus. Her colleagues supplied the practical examination.
Her 26 August 2026 article, ACAS CONSULTS ON NEW APPROACH TO WORKPLACE DISPUTES, considers Acas’ proposed overhaul of the disciplinary and grievance Code. The themes could have been assembled specifically to torment TCAP: informal resolution moving centre stage, practical resolution instead of procedural escalation, greater attention to reasonable adjustments, mediation and facilitated conversations, better records, concise submissions and, exquisitely, a deliberate move towards a “less adversarial tone”.
Somewhere in the Cepac bundle, a filing cabinet just laughed itself off its hinges.
Practical Resolution, Meet The Paper Fortress
Strip my claim back to its original bones and it was not the Schleswig-Holstein Question. In August 2024, I had a recruitment conversation through Page Outsourcing concerning a production role at Cepac. During that conversation I disclosed the mental-health-related reason for the gap in my employment history. An interview was offered for after the bank holiday. I contemporaneously messaged someone about that interview the same day. The interview then disappeared, and the later litigation position denied that an interview had been offered.
There. That is the fucking dispute.
Who offered what, when did they offer it, what information was known, what happened next and why?
You could fit the essential questions on the back of the lunch receipt from a mediocre service-station Greggs.
Yet the litigation eventually grew into something grotesquely disproportionate to its starting point. By March 2026, a duty judge described the matter as a “simple claim” while recording that the Tribunal file had reached 1,941 pages. Whatever allocation of blame anyone wants to make for every sheet of that mountain, one thing is difficult to maintain with a straight face: this was not the glowing triumph of simplicity, early resolution and de-escalation now advertised by Horsfield Menzies.
The original factual knot could have been untied.
Instead, everybody received more rope.
Procedural Escalation Is Apparently Bad Now
Rigg explains that the proposed Acas approach seeks “practical resolution rather than procedural escalation”. That is a terrific phrase. Frame it. Laminate it. Put one beside every printer at Horsfield Menzies and another above the cupboard where the hearing bundles live.
Because procedural escalation was not exactly an endangered species in the Cepac litigation.
Horsfield Menzies acted for Cepac while the dispute developed through preliminary hearings, disclosure battles, conduct allegations, strike-out machinery and increasingly hostile correspondence. Costs became another piece of equipment on the workbench. Figures in the region of £25,000 to £30,000 were put into the conversation as anticipated costs exposure, and the proceedings ultimately ended with a £20,000 costs order in Cepac’s favour after the claim was struck out.
Again, the point is not that lawyers are forbidden from defending claims, seeking costs or making procedural applications. That would be idiotic. The point is the juxtaposition.
Horsfield Menzies now publishes warm guidance about preventing disagreements becoming entrenched, avoiding unnecessary escalation and concentrating on practical resolution. Meanwhile, the case TCAP has spent months documenting became a shit-slick of procedure in which the dispute itself sometimes seemed like an irritating little object buried underneath the machinery assembled to dispose of it.
The brochure says de-escalate.
The file says load the forklift.
Reasonable Adjustments Look Lovely In A Blog
Rigg also highlights the proposed Code’s increased emphasis on reasonable adjustments and inclusion. She notes that the draft expressly reminds employers of Equality Act obligations and references adjustments throughout the process.
Again: splendid.
TCAP is extremely enthusiastic about Horsfield Menzies discovering reasonable adjustments.
During my litigation, health and disability were hardly obscure concepts hiding underneath the carpet. Medical information had been supplied because disability itself was disputed. I repeatedly sought ways of participating that reflected the problems documented in that material, including remote participation and paper determination where appropriate.
The treatment of healthcare evidence produced one of the uglier little episodes. Sam Butler wrote that “We have spoken with the medical centre…” while disputing issues around an appointment and argued that rearranging healthcare would be “more expedient” than moving the litigation timetable. I subsequently complained about the use of my medical information, the medical-centre contact, aggressive costs pressure and other aspects of his correspondence.
Those complaints went directly upwards.
On 23 March 2025, Simon Horsfield received my complaint concerning Butler. Angus Menzies and Daniel Rubin were also drawn into the complaint history. What did not arrive back with similar enthusiasm was a reasoned investigation outcome explaining what had been examined, what had been accepted or rejected and why.
Which is awkward, because Horsfield Menzies keeps publishing articles explaining how beautifully these things should work.
The reasonable-adjustment paragraph looks fabulous on Squarespace.
It looked rather less decorative from my side of the litigation.
Mediation Has Entered The Chat
Another feature Rigg identifies is Acas’ formal recognition of mediation and facilitated conversations as ways of resolving workplace disputes. The proposed philosophy is obvious enough: give people an off-ramp before every disagreement turns into Verdun with Outlook attachments.
That concept is hardly revolutionary, but its appearance in this particular blog is delicious.
There were multiple moments when the Cepac dispute could have been narrowed rather than inflated. The recruitment question itself was narrow. The evidence about the interview offer was identifiable. The disability disclosure was a defined factual issue. My complaint about litigation conduct created another obvious opportunity for somebody senior to examine what had happened and give a reasoned response.
Instead, the dispute continued hardening.
By the time everybody reached the later stages, the litigation had accumulated so much procedural armour that finding the original recruitment question underneath it resembled an archaeological excavation conducted through lever-arch files.
This is precisely why early resolution matters. Not because everyone should hold hands, drink peppermint tea and agree that conflict is terribly upsetting, but because litigation develops momentum. Correspondence creates correspondence. Applications create responses. Accusations create rebuttals. Costs create pressure. Pressure creates reactions, and reactions become another exhibit.
Eventually the process starts eating its own tail.
Then somebody publishes a blog about de-escalation.
Fucking magnificent.
A Less Adversarial Tone
And now we reach the champagne.
Rigg says the draft Code deliberately adopts a “less adversarial tone”, moving away from immediately legalistic framing and towards earlier constructive conversations.
There is nothing wrong with that idea. In fact, TCAP recommends Horsfield Menzies try it sometime.
The correspondence in my dispute did not always give the impression that everybody had gathered around a whiteboard to workshop emotional safety. Costs pressure was explicit. Conduct became a litigation topic in itself. My reactions to what I considered oppressive or unreasonable behaviour subsequently became material against me. Complaints about the process became part of the process.
That is how adversarial systems develop their own weather.
One side applies pressure. The other reacts. The reaction becomes evidence. More pressure follows because the reaction now supposedly proves something about the person reacting. Before long, everyone is standing inside a procedural hurricane arguing about who first opened the window.
Horsfield Menzies knows this terrain perfectly well. Its lawyers make their living in it.
Which makes an article advertising “less adversarial tone” especially rich when the firm’s own litigation footprint in this case looks less like conflict resolution and more like somebody discovering every setting on the photocopier except calm the fuck down.
Keep Records, Says Rachel
Rigg’s article also recommends keeping records of informal conversations, mediation offers and other efforts to resolve matters. She explains why: if the parties later argue about whether earlier resolution was possible, those records may matter.
Correct.
Absolutely fucking correct.
Records matter because memories mutate, pleadings crystallise positions and later accounts acquire a suspicious tendency to become much cleaner than the messy events that produced them.
That is one reason the recruitment evidence matters so much to me. My contemporaneous WhatsApp message recorded the interview offer at the time, before an Employment Tribunal claim existed and before anyone had a strategic reason to manufacture a recruitment narrative. The Page disclosure material contained its own trail, including a redacted chain labelled “Discrimination” and a recruiter note recording the health disclosure.
Then came the later denial that an interview had been offered.
This is exactly the environment in which contemporaneous records stop being administrative clutter and start becoming bloody important.
Rigg is right.
Write things down.
Keep them.
Then, when litigation arrives, perhaps begin with what the contemporary evidence actually says instead of constructing a procedural cathedral around why everybody should stop asking.
Rachel Rigg Knows Litigation Perfectly Well
The surrounding context makes the article even better.
Horsfield Menzies describes Rigg as a Senior Associate whose expertise lies in Employment Tribunal claims, built through managing volume litigation for large UK employers. Her profile says she helps clients mitigate risk from the earliest stage of a concern and continues through to successfully defending claims that reach Tribunal.
It also says she advises on contentious employee subject access requests and works with HR and legal teams so those requests are managed in a way that supports “litigation strategies in play”.
There is nothing improper about that. It is simply an unusually neat portrait of modern employment law in two browser tabs.
Tab one: early resolution, inclusion, mediation, less adversarial tone.
Tab two: contentious DSARs, Tribunal claims and litigation strategies.
One office contains both the scented candle and the fucking bunker.
Perhaps that is inevitable. Employment lawyers exist because workplace disputes do not always resolve over coffee. But it does mean Horsfield Menzies should expect somebody to notice when its public thought leadership begins sounding like the behavioural opposite of the cases it is simultaneously fighting.
TCAP has noticed.
Repeatedly.
The Blog Is Becoming An Operations Manual
This is the third time Rachel Rigg’s writing has supplied material for this series, and the pattern is becoming difficult to miss.
When Horsfield Menzies publishes about complaint handling and reasoned outcomes, TCAP has a complaint history with no reasoned outcome communicated.
When Rigg publishes about DSARs becoming fishing expeditions, TCAP has a case in which my attempts to understand the documentary record became part of the conflict itself.
Now she publishes about early resolution, adjustments, mediation, practical problem-solving and a less adversarial tone while the Cepac file sits nearby like a pallet of contrary evidence awaiting collection.
At some point these stop feeling like isolated blogs and begin resembling instructions found after the machinery has already chewed somebody’s sleeve.
That is why Blog vs Behaviour works.
TCAP does not need to invent the standard.
Horsfield Menzies keeps publishing it.
Less Adversarial, More Bundle
The Acas proposals discussed by Rachel Rigg concern workplace disciplinary and grievance processes. Horsfield Menzies’ role in my case was as external litigation solicitor for Cepac. Those are not identical legal functions, and TCAP does not need to pretend they are.
The contradiction is simpler and more interesting than that.
Horsfield Menzies is publicly selling a philosophy of dispute management: intervene earlier, use practical resolution, take adjustments seriously, consider mediation, keep useful records and reduce unnecessary adversarialism.
Excellent.
That philosophy does not become worthless the moment litigation starts.
If anything, that is when the fucking thing becomes expensive enough to matter.
My Cepac dispute began with an interview offer, a disability disclosure and a disappearing recruitment opportunity. It later accumulated thousands of pages, repeated procedural conflict, costs pressure, conduct disputes, a strike-out and a £20,000 costs order.
Rachel Rigg’s article says disputes benefit from early resolution and less escalation.
TCAP agrees.
Perhaps next time Horsfield Menzies should send the article to the litigation team before publishing it to everybody else.
Lee Thompson – Founder, The Cummins Accountability Project
Sources
- Horsfield Menzies – ACAS CONSULTS ON NEW APPROACH TO WORKPLACE DISPUTES
- Horsfield Menzies – Rachel Rigg
- TCAP – Rachel Rigg : REASONED EXPLANATION NOT INCLUDED
- TCAP – Rachel Rigg : WHO GETS TO CALL IT A FISHING EXPEDITION?
- TCAP – The Cepac Files : Horsfield Menzies Executing Their Advertised Tactics
- TCAP – Rachel Yorke : Costs Threat Product
- TCAP – Simon Horsfield : What Leaders Tolerate