Redundancy pay and consultation deadlines

Updated September 2026

A redundancy is not one legal event. It is a payment you may be owed, a dismissal you may be able to challenge, and sometimes a consultation duty your employer owed a group of you. Those three things have different clocks.

Three different deadlines

People lose the unfair dismissal claim while they wait for the redundancy cheque to be “sorted.” The payment claim can wait longer. The dismissal claim often cannot.

Statutory redundancy pay

You need two years of continuous service. That qualifying period was not cut by the Employment Rights Act rollout; the six-month unfair-dismissal change due on 1 January 2027 does not rewrite the redundancy-pay table. Statutory redundancy pay is still:

• half a week's pay for each complete year you were under 22
• one week's pay for each complete year you were 22 to 40
• one and a half weeks' pay for each complete year you were 41 or over

Service is capped at 20 years. A “week's pay” is also capped at the statutory maximum in force on your termination date (check the current figure on gov.uk; it is uprated each April). Your contract or a collective agreement can promise more. It cannot promise less than the statutory floor if you qualify.

If your employer is insolvent, the Redundancy Payments Service can pay the statutory amount. That is a different process from a tribunal claim against a solvent employer who simply has not paid.

Claiming the payment

Write to the employer first and ask for the calculation in writing: start date, EDT, age bands, week's pay used, and the cap they applied. If they do not pay, a tribunal claim for a redundancy payment has a six-month limit from the relevant date. That six-month window is older law. Do not assume the October 2026 reforms made it longer, and do not assume they made it shorter.

Acas early conciliation is still the usual gateway before a tribunal claim. Start it in time even if you are “only” chasing the cheque.

When redundancy is also unfair dismissal

A genuine redundancy can still be an unfair dismissal if the pool was wrong, the selection was a stitch-up, suitable alternative roles were ignored, or there was no meaningful consultation with you as an individual. That claim needs the ordinary unfair-dismissal qualifying period (two years now; six months from 1 January 2027) unless it is automatically unfair. The filing deadline follows the unfair dismissal time limit, not the six-month payment clock.

If the “redundancy” looks like fire-and-rehire, read what actually changed on fire-and-rehire as well. The labels on the letterhead do not decide the claim.

Collective consultation

If your employer proposes 20 or more redundancies at one establishment within 90 days, they must consult appropriate representatives and notify the government (Form HR1). The minimum consultation window is 30 days for 20 to 99 proposed dismissals and 45 days for 100 or more. Those are consultation periods, not your personal claim deadline.

A failure here can support a protective award, which is about the employer's process for the group, not whether your individual selection was fair. If you think the numbers were split across “establishments” to dodge consultation, get advice quickly. The facts are specific and the clock is not generous.

Notice on the way out

Redundancy does not wipe statutory notice. You are still owed the higher of contractual notice and the section 86 statutory minimum. Payment in lieu is common. Garden leave is common. Neither one changes the need to pin down the effective date of termination before you use the deadline calculator.

This is general information for England, Wales and Scotland, not legal advice. Northern Ireland has a separate system. Confirm current weekly-pay caps and commencement dates on gov.uk.