Redundancy pay calculator

Statutory redundancy pay is the minimum the law requires when you lose your job through redundancy after two years or more. It depends on three numbers: your age, your complete years with the employer and your weekly pay, which is capped. Put them in below.

How statutory redundancy pay is worked out

GOV.UK sets out the formula in one passage, and the calculator above follows it exactly:

Two details decide most results. The bands follow your age during each year of service, not your age today, so someone who is 43 with ten years’ service has two years at the higher rate and eight at the middle one. And the years are counted backwards from the date the job ends, which is why the twenty that count are always the most recent twenty. The statute puts it the same way:

Only complete years count. Eleven years and ten months is eleven years. If you want to check the arithmetic by hand, the steps and two worked examples are in how to work out redundancy pay by age band.

What counts as a week’s pay

That average is then capped. For a redundancy on or after 6 April 2026 the cap is £751 a week, raised from £719 by SI 2026/310. If you were made redundant before that date the lower figure applies. Pay above the cap is simply ignored by the formula, which is why the statutory figure falls further short of a real week the more you earn.

Examples at different ages and pay

The first person was under 22 for three of their four years, so those count at half a week each and only the most recent year at a full week: two and a half weeks of real pay. The second is in the middle band throughout and under the cap, so twelve years give twelve weeks. The third earns well over the cap, so the formula uses £751 rather than their real week. The fourth shows the ceiling: however long the service and however high the pay, statutory redundancy pay stops at £22,530.

Who qualifies, and who does not

You normally qualify if you are an employee and have worked for your current employer for 2 years or more. Workers who are not employees, and people below two years, have no statutory entitlement — although nothing stops an employer paying more than the statute requires.

GOV.UK lists the main exceptions. You are not entitled if your employer offers to keep you on, or offers you suitable alternative work which you refuse without good reason. Being dismissed for misconduct is not redundancy. A small number of groups are excluded altogether, including Crown servants, members of the armed forces and police services, and apprentices who are not employees at the end of their training.

Suitable alternative employment and the trial period

If you are offered another role, you have the right to a four-week trial period, which can be extended for retraining if the extension is agreed in writing before it starts. Telling your employer within the trial period that the job is not suitable does not affect your right to redundancy pay; missing that window can. Whether a job is suitable depends on how similar the work is, its terms, your skills and circumstances, and its pay, status, hours and location.

Northern Ireland

NI Direct sets out the same bands, the same two-year qualifying period and the same twenty-year limit for Northern Ireland. The weekly cap is different: £783 from 6 April 2026 under SR 2026/57, which makes the maximum £23,490. Choose Northern Ireland in the calculator to use it. Employment law in Northern Ireland.

Is redundancy pay taxable?

More precisely, the first £30,000 of all the compensation you receive for losing the job is free of income tax, and statutory redundancy pay uses up part of that allowance. An ex gratia sum paid on top shares the same £30,000. Notice pay, holiday pay, unpaid wages and bonuses are earnings and are taxed in the normal way whatever the total. How the £30,000 threshold works · ex gratia payments.

Notice pay is separate

Redundancy pay does not replace notice. If you are made redundant you are also owed your notice period — at least one week per complete year from two years, up to twelve — either worked or paid. Notice pay is not capped. Work out your notice.

If your employer does not pay

There is a time limit, and it is shorter than many people expect:

A written claim to your employer within six months is enough to keep the right alive. Section 164(2) gives a tribunal power to allow a claim in the following six months if it is just and equitable, but that is a discretion, not a second deadline. Tribunal time limits.

Redundancy pay and a settlement agreement

A settlement agreement offered alongside a redundancy does not replace your statutory redundancy pay. If you qualify, it is owed anyway, and an agreement that pays less than the statutory figure is giving you less than the law already guarantees. The usual structure is statutory redundancy pay plus notice pay, with any ex gratia sum on top as the price of the claims you are giving up. Settlement agreements and redundancy · settlement agreement calculator.

Check the statutory figure yourself before you sign. If the calculator above gives more than the agreement shows as statutory redundancy pay, ask what weekly pay and service the employer used.

Common questions