Notice period calculator

A contract can give more than the law. It cannot give less

This is the part employers get wrong, and they get it wrong by doing something reasonable: they read their own contract. A contract saying “one month’s notice on either side” looks generous next to a week, and it is, right up until somebody has eight years of service. At that point the statute requires eight weeks and the contractual term simply does not apply.

So the useful answer is not what the contract says or what the statute says. It is which of them is higher, on this employee, on this date. Fill the contractual figure in and the calculator will tell you when the contract is the one leaving you exposed.

How it is worked out

Section 86 of the Employment Rights Act 1996 gives a week’s notice once a month’s service is served, then a week for each complete year, stopping at 12 weeks. Below a month there is no statutory notice at all, which is the opposite of the redundancy position where notice survives after the payment has gone.

The employee’s side is not a mirror image. They owe one week once they qualify and never more than that, however long they stay, unless their contract says otherwise.

Notice runs from the day after it is given, so a week’s notice handed over on a Monday ends on the Monday following. Whether it is worked, spent on garden leave or paid in lieu does not change the length of it.

What this does not decide

Notice tells you when employment ends. It does not tell you whether ending it is fair, and a correctly calculated notice period attached to an unfair dismissal is still an unfair dismissal. Gross misconduct is the obvious exception to the whole thing, since it can justify dismissal without notice at all, and deciding that it applies is exactly the judgement worth being careful about.

See our disclaimer. This is a calculator rather than advice.