Statutory notice periods and your rights while notice runs

The scale, year by year

Section 86(1) sets three bands, and the table below spells them out for every length of service. The weeks come from the same function the notice calculator uses, with notice given on 2 November 2026.

Two quirks follow from the wording. First, a year only counts once it is complete: eleven years and eleven months still give eleven weeks. Second, years between the first month and the second anniversary are flat at 1 week, so an employee with twenty-three months has the same minimum as someone with five weeks.

What “continuous employment” means here

Service runs from the day you started work (section 211) to the day notice is given. Section 212 counts every week in which a contract of employment governs your relationship with the employer, so a week of holiday, sickness or maternity leave inside the contract counts like any other. Outside a contract, a gap caused by sickness or injury of up to 26 weeks, a temporary cessation of work, or an absence that the employer treats by arrangement as continuing employment can bridge two periods of work. Some periods, such as days on strike, do not break continuity but push the start date later. Your written statement of particulars should give the date your employer uses; if it is wrong, raise it before notice is calculated.

Section 86(4) closes one gap: a contract for a fixed term of 1 month or less, held by someone who has already worked 3 months or more, is treated as open-ended, so the scale applies to it.

Contracts may add notice, never remove it

Section 86(3) makes any shorter clause subject to the statutory minimum. A contract promising “one week’s notice in all cases” therefore gives ten weeks to someone with ten years of service. A contract can go further than the statute, and many do for senior posts. What section 86(3) does not stop is a waiver: on a given occasion either party may give up notice, or the employee may accept pay in lieu instead. The guide to pay in lieu explains what that payment must include.

Pay while notice runs, if you are off work

Sections 87 to 91 are the part of the law most people never hear about. They apply to the statutory minimum notice, whether the employer or the employee gave it, and they set a floor on pay for any time in that period when the employee:

• is ready and willing to work but the employer provides no work;
• is incapable of work because of sickness or injury;
• is absent because of pregnancy or childbirth, or on adoption, shared parental, carer’s, parental bereavement, neonatal care, parental or paternity leave;
• is on holiday under the terms of the contract.

For an employee with normal working hours, section 88 guarantees those hours at the average hourly rate of a week’s pay. For one without normal hours, section 89 guarantees a week’s pay for each week, provided the employee is ready and willing to do a reasonable amount of work; that condition is lifted during sickness, family leave and holiday. Statutory Sick Pay, SMP, holiday pay and any company payment all count towards the guarantee, so the employer only tops up the difference. The week’s pay used is measured on a calculation date set by section 226(1): the day before the statutory notice period starts. The method is in how a week’s pay is worked out.

When the guarantee does not apply

• The contract notice the employer must give is at least one week longer than the statutory minimum (section 87(4)). With a three-month clause and four years of service, the protection is gone.
• The time off was leave you asked for and the employer granted, such as unpaid leave (section 91(1)).
• You resigned and then took part in a strike before the contract ended (section 91(2)).
• You resigned: the employer’s liability only arises once you actually leave at the end of your notice (sections 88(3) and 89(5)).

When no notice is owed

Section 86(6) keeps the old common-law right to end a contract without notice because of the other party’s conduct. For employers, that means gross misconduct, such as violence towards a colleague or customer; for employees, a fundamental breach by the employer that justifies resigning at once, known as constructive dismissal. A fixed-term contract that simply reaches its agreed end needs no notice either. In every other case, dismissal with less than the minimum is a breach of contract, and the remedy is the notice pay you should have received: raise a grievance first, then, if needed, a breach of contract claim at the employment tribunal (an industrial tribunal in Northern Ireland).

Notice and redundancy interact: if the employer gives less than the statutory notice, the date used to count service for redundancy pay moves to where the statutory notice would have ended. See the relevant date.