Employment Rights Act 1996

The core UK statute consolidating most individual employment rights — unfair dismissal, redundancy payments, unlawful deductions, notice pay and whistleblowing protection all sit within it. It is currently being amended in stages by the Employment Rights Act 2025, with the largest changes due from 1 January 2027.

Does the Employment Rights Act 1996 cover discrimination claims?

No. Discrimination, harassment and victimisation related to a protected characteristic (such as sex, race, disability or age) are covered by the Equality Act 2010, a separate statute. The Employment Rights Act 1996 covers unfair dismissal, redundancy payments, unlawful deductions from wages, notice pay, written statements of employment particulars and whistleblowing protection. Many tribunal claims combine causes of action from both Acts — for example an unfair dismissal claim under ERA 1996 alongside a discrimination claim under the Equality Act 2010 arising from the same dismissal — but they remain legally distinct claims with different rules on qualifying periods, remedies and caps.

Is the unfair dismissal qualifying period two years or six months?

As of today it is still two years of continuous employment for most dismissals. The Employment Rights Act 2025 will reduce this to six months, but that change has not yet commenced. Check the current commencement position before relying on either figure, since the six-month period only applies once the relevant provision is brought into force.

Has the compensatory award cap already been removed?

No, not yet. The cap — currently the lower of a fixed amount and 52 weeks' pay — remains in force today. The Employment Rights Act 2025 repeals the whole of section 124 of the Employment Rights Act 1996, removing both the fixed amount and the 52-weeks'-pay limb, but this is due to be commenced from 1 January 2027 and, even then, only for dismissals where the effective date of termination falls on or after that date.

Is notice pay capped the same way as the basic award?

No. The weekly pay cap under section 227 applies to the basic award, the additional award and statutory redundancy payments. Statutory notice pay under sections 86 to 91 is calculated using a week's pay under sections 221 to 229 with no equivalent statutory ceiling, so someone earning well above the cap still receives notice pay based on their real weekly wage, even though their basic award is calculated using the capped figure.

Does the Employment Rights Act 1996 set out my notice period?

It sets out the statutory minimum, in sections 86 to 91 — broadly one week's notice per complete year of continuous employment, up to a maximum of 12 weeks after 12 years' service, with a minimum of one week once you have worked one month. Your contract can provide for a longer notice period, in which case the contractual notice applies if it exceeds the statutory minimum. Employers can also pay in lieu of notice where the contract allows it, or as damages for failing to give proper notice.

Where do I find the current caps and figures if this page goes out of date?

The current week's pay cap, compensatory award cap and maximum basic award are set annually by statutory instrument under the Employment Rights Act 1996, usually each April, and published on legislation.gov.uk and gov.uk. Because these figures change and because the Employment Rights Act 2025 is phasing in further changes from 1 January 2027, always check the current position rather than relying on a fixed number from memory.

What the Employment Rights Act 1996 actually is

The Employment Rights Act 1996 is a

— it did not invent most of the rights it contains so much as gather them together. Before 1996, individual employment protections were scattered across a series of separate statutes going back to the 1960s and 1970s, including earlier employment protection legislation and the Wages Act 1986. Parliament consolidated these into a single Act to make the law easier to find and apply, and ERA 1996 has been the primary reference point for individual employment rights in Great Britain ever since (it does not extend to Northern Ireland, which has its own equivalent legislation).

“Consolidating” does not mean “frozen.” ERA 1996 has been amended repeatedly since 1996 — the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998 inserted the whistleblowing provisions, the Employment Relations Act 1999 and later Acts adjusted unfair dismissal and family-leave provisions, and various statutory instruments update the pay caps each year. It is now being amended again, more substantially than at any point since 1999, by the Employment Rights Act 2025.

It is important to be clear about what ERA 1996 does

cover. It is not where discrimination law lives — claims relating to a protected characteristic (sex, race, disability, age, religion or belief, sexual orientation, gender reassignment, pregnancy and maternity, marriage and civil partnership) are governed by the

, a separate statute with its own qualifying rules, remedies and, for most claims, no compensation cap at all. A single set of facts — a dismissal following a period of ill health, for example — can give rise to claims under both Acts at once, but they are analysed, and capped, separately.

The written statement of employment particulars (section 1)

Section 1 requires an employer to give a written statement setting out the main terms of the employment relationship — pay, hours, holiday entitlement, job title, place of work, notice periods and more. This is one of the provisions amended since the Act's original 1996 text: the written statement became a

— owed on or before the first day of employment rather than within the first two months, as the original section 1 allowed — and was extended from employees to workers more generally, both with effect from 6 April 2020.

The written statement is not itself the contract of employment, and the two are not always identical, though in practice many employers combine them in a single document. Failing to provide one does not, on its own, give rise to a standalone tribunal claim for compensation, but if a worker brings certain other successful tribunal claims and the employer was in breach of the section 1 duty at the time, the tribunal can add a modest additional award on top.

Protection from unlawful deductions from wages (Part II)

Part II, sections 13 to 27, protects workers from having money deducted from their wages, or from being required to make a payment to their employer, unless the deduction is required or authorised by statute (such as tax and National Insurance), authorised by the worker's contract and previously notified in writing, or the worker has given prior written consent. “Wages” is defined broadly and includes most contractual and some non-contractual payments — commission, bonuses, holiday pay, statutory sick pay and guarantee payments among them.

A common real-world use is an employer simply not paying wages that are due, or paying less than agreed — both are treated as an unlawful deduction of the shortfall, not just an outright refusal to pay. Claims must generally be brought within three months less one day of the deduction (or the last in a series of deductions), a time limit that can be paused while ACAS Early Conciliation is attempted.

Unfair dismissal (Part X)

Part X, sections 94 to 134A, contains the right not to be unfairly dismissed — in practice the single most litigated part of the Act. An employer must show a potentially fair reason for dismissal (capability, conduct, redundancy, a statutory restriction preventing continued employment, or “some other substantial reason”) and that dismissing for that reason was reasonable in all the circumstances, judged against the band of reasonable responses a reasonable employer might have adopted.

To bring an ordinary unfair dismissal claim you currently need two years' continuous employment at the effective date of termination — that qualifying period does not apply to certain automatically unfair reasons (such as dismissal for whistleblowing, pregnancy, or asserting a statutory right), which can be claimed from day one. A successful claim produces two separately calculated remedies: a

, a fixed sum worked out from age, length of service and a week's pay capped at £751, up to a current maximum of £22,530; and a

, assessed on actual financial loss and currently capped at the lower of £123,543 and 52 weeks' pay (both figures are due to change — see below).

Redundancy payments (Part XI)

Part XI sets out the right to a statutory redundancy payment where an employee with at least two years' continuous service is dismissed because their job genuinely disappears — a business closure, a workplace closure, or a reduced need for employees to carry out a particular kind of work. The calculation uses the same three-band age-and-service formula as the unfair dismissal basic award, applied to the same weekly pay cap, which is why the two figures are often confused with one another or, wrongly, assumed to be the same payment. A redundancy dismissal can still be unfair in its own right if a fair selection process was not followed, in which case both a redundancy payment and separate unfair dismissal remedies may be available, though a redundancy payment already received is set off against a basic award for the same dismissal to prevent double recovery.

Statutory notice periods (sections 86 to 91) — a different week's pay

Sections 86 to 91 set the statutory minimum notice period an employer must give: broadly one week for each complete year of continuous employment, up to a maximum of 12 weeks after 12 years' service, with a flat one week once a month's service has been completed. A longer contractual notice period displaces the statutory minimum where it is more generous; the statutory minimum is a floor, not a ceiling.

This is the part of ERA 1996 most often mixed up with the basic award, and it is worth stating plainly:

notice pay under sections 86 to 91 is calculated using an actual week's pay under sections 221 to 229, with no equivalent statutory cap.

The £751 cap in section 227 applies only to the basic award, the additional award (for an employer's non-compliance with a reinstatement or re-engagement order) and statutory redundancy payments. Someone earning well above the cap still has their notice pay calculated on their real, uncapped weekly wage. Treating the two week's-pay figures as interchangeable is a genuine and recurring source of miscalculated claims — it is the same distinction that had to be corrected across several calculators on this site after a 6–7 September 2026 audit found notice pay had been calculated using the capped figure in error.

Whistleblowing protection (Part IVA)

Part IVA was inserted by the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998 and protects workers who make a “protected disclosure” — broadly, reporting information they reasonably believe shows wrongdoing such as a criminal offence, breach of a legal obligation, miscarriage of justice, danger to health and safety, or damage to the environment, disclosed to an appropriate person or body and, for external disclosures, meeting further conditions. A worker who is dismissed or subjected to a detriment because they made a protected disclosure has a claim with no qualifying period and no cap on the compensatory award, reflecting Parliament's view that whistleblowers need stronger protection than the ordinary unfair dismissal regime provides.

How the Employment Rights Act 2025 is changing ERA 1996

The Employment Rights Act 2025 amends ERA 1996 in stages rather than all at once. Two changes matter most for anyone relying on figures elsewhere on this site, and both are still in the future as of today, 28 September 2026.

The compensatory award cap regime is being repealed in full, not just reduced.

Section 25(3) of the Employment Rights Act 2025 omits the whole of section 124 of ERA 1996, not merely the £123,543 figure within it — so the alternative 52-weeks'-pay limit in section 124(1ZA)(b) is removed at the same time, not left standing as a fallback ceiling. This is due to be commenced by the Employment Rights Act 2025 (Commencement No. —) regulations from

, and even then only applies where the effective date of termination falls on or after that date — a dismissal that takes effect before 1 January 2027 remains subject to the current cap even if the tribunal hears the case afterwards. Until that date, describing the compensatory award as capped at the lower of £123,543 and 52 weeks' pay remains correct.

The unfair dismissal qualifying period is separately being cut from two years to six months.

This is a different provision from the compensatory award change and is also due to commence from 1 January 2027. Once in force, an employee already working for an employer on the commencement date, with six months' service or more, gains unfair dismissal protection immediately rather than having to wait to accrue it afterwards. Until commencement, the two-year qualifying period described in the Part X section above is the current law, and it is worth checking the live commencement position before relying on either figure, since implementation dates for staged reforms have moved before.

Priya is 50 years old, has 8 complete years' continuous service, and earns £900 a week — comfortably above the current £751 weekly pay cap. She is dismissed today with a payment in lieu of her statutory notice and later succeeds in an unfair dismissal claim.

Basic award: weeks earned (8 yrs, all aged 41–50)

Basic award: week's pay used (capped)

Statutory notice (s.86): 1 week per year, 8 years

Notice pay: week's pay used (actual, uncapped)

Two different figures for “a week's pay'' are used in the same dismissal: the basic award is worked out on the capped £751, giving £9,012, while the notice pay is worked out on Priya's real weekly wage of £900, giving £7,200. Had the cap wrongly been applied to the notice pay as well, it would have come to only £6,008 — nearly £1,200 less than she is actually owed. The two calculations sit side by side in the same dismissal but use different figures, which is precisely why the two are easy to conflate.

Continuous employment

Employment Rights Act 1996

Employment Rights Act 2025

Employment Rights Act 2025, section 25

Implementing the Plan to Make Work Pay and Employment Rights Act

Employment Rights Act 1996 — Employment Tribunal Glossary

What the Employment Rights Act 1996 covers — unfair dismissal, redundancy, notice pay, deductions and whistleblowing — and how the Employment Rights Act 2025 changes it from 1 January 2027.