Notice period calculator

The statutory minimum notice is one of the few numbers in an employment exit that nobody negotiates. It is set by section 86 of the Employment Rights Act 1996, it depends only on how long you have worked there, and a contract can improve on it but never cut it.

Statutory notice by length of service

The employer’s minimum grows with service. Yours does not. That asymmetry is written into the section itself.

What section 86 says

Complete years only

The count is of complete years of continuous employment. Seven years and eleven months is seven years, and seven weeks’ notice. The month before an anniversary is therefore worth checking if notice is about to be given: one more complete year adds a week.

Your side of it

Subsection (3) does two jobs. It overrides a contract that offers less than the statute, and it leaves room for either side to waive notice or accept a payment in lieu — which is how most settlement agreements deal with it.

Pay during your notice

This is the part of the notice rules that most people have never heard of and that matters most when someone is signed off. If you are dismissed with the statutory minimum and fall ill during it, sick pay is topped up to your normal rate for your normal hours. The same applies to holiday, family leave, and time when you are ready to work but given nothing to do.

The one-week trap

Read with section 87(1), this means the protection only covers notice that is the statutory minimum or less than a week above it. If your contract gives thirteen weeks after fifteen years, where the statute gives twelve, the section 88 guarantee does not apply to your notice at all, and pay while sick depends on what the contract says. Look at the last two rows of the table below: one extra week of notice changes the answer.

That is worth knowing before you agree to work your notice while unwell, and before you sign an agreement that turns notice into a payment. Off sick and being offered a settlement.

Worked examples

Payment in lieu of notice and tax

Where the agreement ends your employment straight away and pays you for the notice you did not work, that payment is earnings. Section 402D of the Income Tax (Earnings and Pensions) Act 2003 treats post-employment notice pay as taxable in full, and it is not covered by the £30,000 threshold that applies to compensation for losing the job. Whether the agreement calls it notice pay, a termination payment or an ex gratia sum does not change that. How payment in lieu of notice is taxed · what an ex gratia label does and does not do.

Notice pay is not capped

Unlike statutory redundancy pay, which uses a week’s pay capped at £751, notice pay is your actual pay. That makes it a larger share of a leaving payment for anyone paid above the cap. How the redundancy cap works.

Dismissal without notice

An employer who dismisses for gross misconduct relies on this subsection. It does not decide whether the conduct was bad enough; that is for a tribunal or court if it is challenged. If you were dismissed on the spot and dispute the reason, both the missing notice and the fairness of the dismissal are claims. What an unfair dismissal claim could be worth.

Notice inside a settlement agreement

A settlement agreement usually fixes the termination date and says how notice is handled — worked, paid in lieu, or spent on garden leave under the contract. The notice you are owed is a fixed entitlement, not a concession, so it belongs underneath the negotiated figure rather than inside it. If an offer quietly includes your notice pay in the headline, the compensation part is smaller than it looks. Reading an offer · the clauses that deal with termination.

Scotland and Northern Ireland

Section 86 applies in Scotland as it does in England and Wales. Northern Ireland has its own Order, which this page does not cover; the Northern Ireland page sets out where the rules there differ.

Common questions