Guide · Building a case

Preserving your evidence

Tribunals decide cases on evidence, and evidence has a shelf life: memories blur, messages auto-delete, access to work systems ends the day you do. The habits in this guide cost minutes a week, and they are the difference between "I'm sure it happened in the spring" and a dated entry a tribunal can rely on. One section of this guide is a warning — because there are ways of gathering evidence that damage the very case they were meant to help.

The diary: the single highest-value habit

Start a written record today, kept somewhere personal (never on a work device or work account). For each incident: the date and time, where it happened, who was present, what was said or done — as close to verbatim as you can manage — and how you responded. Add entries as soon after the event as possible, and don't go back and edit old ones; a contemporaneous note, warts and all, carries more weight than a polished reconstruction, precisely because it looks like what it is.

Why it matters so much: months from now, a tribunal will be comparing your account against your employer's. The side with dates, names and detail is the side that gets believed. Contemporaneous notes are also what turn a vague sense of "this kept happening" into the dated chronology that arguments like continuing acts depend on.

What to keep

The paperwork of your employment: contract, offer letter, variation letters, staff handbook and policies (disciplinary, grievance, equal opportunities), job description — saved now, while you still have access.
Money records: every payslip, P60s, pension statements, expenses — the raw material of any wages or compensation calculation.
The messages: emails, texts, WhatsApps and platform messages that show the treatment, the timeline, or your complaints about it — including the innocuous ones that fix dates and show what "normal" looked like before things changed. Screenshot chat messages so the sender, date and time are visible; auto-delete settings destroy evidence silently.
Your performance record: appraisals, targets met, praise received — the antidote to a case suddenly built on your alleged underperformance.
Witnesses: a private note of who saw or heard each incident, and personal contact details for departing colleagues — people leave, and work email addresses die.
Health records, where relevant: GP visits and fit notes connected to workplace stress or to a disability — with dates that tie them to the timeline.

How to keep it

Forward or copy to personal storage only what you are entitled to copy (see the warning below), keep originals unaltered — don't annotate the only copy of a document; annotate a duplicate — and back the collection up somewhere that survives your phone being lost. A single folder, roughly organised by date, is enough; you are preserving, not yet presenting.

The warning: how evidence-gathering backfires. Mass-forwarding your work inbox to a personal account, copying confidential files "just in case", or taking documents about other people can breach your contract and confidentiality obligations — and has cost real claimants dearly: it can become a free-standing reason for dismissal, a counterclaim, and a stain on your credibility in the very tribunal you were preparing for. The safe rule: documents about you that you received or created in the ordinary course of your job are generally fair to keep; other people's data, commercially confidential material, and bulk exports are not. When in doubt, note that a document exists (title, date, where it lives) rather than taking it — because disclosure and the subject access request exist to get it lawfully later.

The lawful long arms: SARs and disclosure

Two mechanisms retrieve what you couldn't keep. A data subject access request (a "SAR") is your statutory right to a copy of the personal data your employer holds about you — emails discussing you included — free, in writing (email is fine, addressed to HR or the data protection contact), with a response normally due within one month. It's often the single most productive step in preparing a case, and it works even after you've left. Later, if a claim is issued, disclosure obliges both sides to produce relevant documents — including ones that harm their case. Which is also worth remembering in reverse: your messages about the dispute are disclosable too, so write nothing, anywhere, that you wouldn't be content for the tribunal to read.

Covert recordings: a genuine grey zone

Recording a meeting without saying so is not a crime for your own personal use, and tribunals have admitted covert recordings where they were relevant — but the practice carries real costs: it can itself be treated as misconduct, it reliably sours settlement discussions, and recordings of parts of meetings you weren't in raise much sharper problems. If a meeting matters, the better first move is to ask openly to record it or to bring a companion, and to write up your own detailed note immediately afterwards — dated, and sent to yourself so the timestamp is independent. If you have already made covert recordings, don't delete them and don't circulate them; take advice on whether and how to use them.

And the deadline still rules everything. Evidence-gathering has a way of feeling like progress while the clock runs. It isn't progress until the claim is protected: the time limits don't wait for your folder to be complete, and a perfect bundle attached to an out-of-time claim is worthless. Check your dates first.

Compute your dates →

Where to take what you've gathered

A tidy folder and a dated chronology roughly double the value of any advice session, free or paid: ACAS (0300 123 1100), your union, Citizens Advice, a law centre, or a regulated adviser can work with what you can show them. Gather; date it; take it with you.

Ready to put this into practice?

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