Unfair dismissal time limit

For as long as most people have been giving advice on employment claims, the answer was three months less a day. From 1 October 2026 it is six months for most claims — but only where the clock started on or after that date. Which side of the line you are on depends on one date, and it is not always the one people expect.

The old limit and the new one

Schedule 12 to the Employment Rights Act 2025 replaces “three” with “six” in a long list of tribunal time limits. The common ones:

What changed, and from when

For unfair dismissal, the “relevant date” in the regulations’ schedule is the effective date of termination. So the question is simple to ask and occasionally awkward to answer: when did your employment end, in law?

The section as it now reads

legislation.gov.uk’s revised text of section 111 still printed “three” when we checked on 1 October 2026; the words above apply the substitution that paragraph 25 directs. GOV.UK’s tribunal guide had already been updated to six months.

When the clock starts

Dismissed with notice

If you were given notice, the effective date of termination is the day the notice runs out. Someone told in late September 2026 that their employment would end after four weeks’ notice has an effective date of termination in October, and so a six-month limit — even though the dismissal was decided and communicated before 1 October 2026.

Paid in lieu, or dismissed on the spot

Where the contract ends without notice, the effective date is the date the termination takes effect. If you are unsure whether you were dismissed with notice or paid in lieu and released at once, the letter that ended your employment is the document to check first. How much notice you were owed.

If you resigned

For a constructive dismissal claim the same definition applies to your own notice, or to the day you left if you gave none. What a constructive dismissal claim is worth.

Counting the days

Acas describes the method plainly: add the calendar months to the date the time limit starts, then take off one day. The examples below use that method for unfair dismissal, with the effective date of termination as the start.

The second and third rows are a day apart and a quarter of a year apart in outcome: employment ending on 30 September 2026 has until 29 December 2026; employment ending a day later has until 31 March 2027.

What pauses the clock, and what does not

Day A is the day you contact Acas for early conciliation; Day B is the day you receive the certificate. The days in between are not counted, and if the limit would otherwise expire during conciliation or in the month after the certificate, it runs to the end of that month. Early conciliation is a compulsory first step before most claims, so you will need it anyway.

Settlement talks are not early conciliation

Negotiating a settlement agreement with your employer, however close you get, does not stop the clock. The statute’s only pause is early conciliation; a grievance or an internal appeal is not one. People lose claims by waiting for a deal that does not arrive. If the deadline is approaching, notify Acas; the conversation can carry on during conciliation. The other deadlines that run alongside an offer · negotiating while the clock runs.

If you miss it

The unfair dismissal section allows a further period only where it was not reasonably practicable to claim in time, and then only for a reasonable further period. Discrimination claims have a wider “just and equitable” discretion under section 123 of the Equality Act 2010.

Neither is something to rely on. The longer limit makes it easier to take advice and negotiate first; it does not make the deadline flexible.

Scotland and Northern Ireland

The change applies in Scotland as in England and Wales. Northern Ireland has its own Order, and its unfair dismissal limit is still three months. The Northern Ireland rules.

Common questions