Notice period

Notice off sick is often paid in full, and almost nobody knows

Somebody has been off sick for months, down to statutory sick pay. They are dismissed on capability grounds and given their notice. Both sides assume the notice is paid at SSP as well.

For a large number of people that is wrong, and the difference is thousands of pounds.

Section 88 makes the employer liable for a week's pay for each week of the statutory notice period where the employee is incapable of work through sickness or injury, on holiday, on maternity, paternity, adoption, shared parental, carer's, bereavement or neonatal care leave, or ready and willing to work with none provided. Anything already paid, SSP included, is credited against it, so the employer makes up the difference to full pay.

Twelve weeks of statutory notice on £600 a week is £7,200. At SSP it is £1,479. The gap is the reason this rule is worth knowing.

Section 87(4) is the switch, and it works backwards

Sections 88 to 91 do not apply where the employer's contractual notice is at least one week more than section 86 requires.

So the comparison nobody makes decides it:

• Contract gives the statutory minimum, or beats it by less than a week: full pay applies
• Contract gives a week or more above statutory: no top-up, and sick pay stands

The perverse result is that the employee on the meanest notice clause is the one the statute protects, and the one on a generous three month clause is not. It catches out both sides, and it turns on a contract term nobody reads until it matters.

One more thing about it: section 87(4) asks about the notice the employer must give, so a resigning employee is protected or not by their employer's clause rather than by their own week.

Notice starts the day after it is given

The day notice is handed over does not count. A week's notice given on a Friday runs from the Saturday and expires at the end of the following Friday.

That is West v Kneels Ltd [1986] IRLR 430, and it mattered there because the extra day decided whether the employee had the service to bring a claim. Getting it wrong by one day is the commonest error in a notice letter.

The ladder is not symmetrical

What the employer owes, section 86(1):

• Under a month: nothing by statute
• A month to two years: one week
• Two to twelve years: one week for each complete year
• Twelve years and over: twelve weeks, and it stops there permanently

What the employee owes, section 86(2): one week, once a month is up, forever.

Somebody with twenty years' service is owed twelve weeks and owes one. Most people assume it runs both ways. A contract can require more from the employee and usually does, but where it is silent, one week is the answer.

And a contract cannot go the other way. A term giving less than section 86 does not reduce the statutory minimum. It can be waived in a particular case by agreement, or settled with a payment in lieu, but it cannot be written down in advance.

Dismissing on the spot does not shorten the service

This is the one that decides claims. Section 97(2) says that where the employer terminates and the section 86 notice would have expired later, the later date is the effective date of termination for the unfair dismissal qualifying period, the basic award and the week's pay cap.Section 145(5) does the same for statutory redundancy pay.

So an employee dismissed a fortnight before their two years, with two weeks of statutory notice not given, reaches two years anyway. Walking somebody out of the door on the day does not stop their clock, and a dismissal timed to land just short of a threshold usually does not land where it was aimed.

The tool flags this whenever the notice period carries somebody across the two year mark. If it does, the continuous service checker shows what else that unlocks, including the qualifying period for unfair dismissal dropping to six months on 1 January 2027.

Dates and entitlement, never the money

It works out dates and entitlement, not money. It does not price the notice, deal with payment in lieu and the tax on it, or cover garden leave, restrictive covenants or fixed term contracts, all of which turn on what the contract says rather than on the statute.