Garden leave means serving your notice period away from work. You are still employed, still paid your normal salary and contractual benefits, and still bound by your contract, but your employer tells you not to come in (or to work from home or another location) until your notice runs out.

This guide covers how garden leave works, what you are entitled to while you are on it, and what to check in your contract before you sign.

Key takeaways

On garden leave you remain an employee on full pay and contractual benefits until your notice ends (gov.uk, Acas).

Your employer generally needs a garden leave clause in your contract to send you home. Imposing it without one risks breaching the contract.

Because you are still employed, you cannot normally start your new job during garden leave, and your holiday keeps accruing.

Garden leave is not PILON. With payment in lieu of notice your employment ends immediately; with garden leave it continues.

The time to understand your garden leave clause is before you sign, not the day you resign.

What is garden leave?

Garden leave (also called gardening leave) is when your employer asks you not to come into work, or to work from home or another location, during your notice period. Gov.uk defines it exactly that way, and confirms you get the same pay and contractual benefits throughout.

The name comes from the idea that you are being paid to stay home and tend the garden. In practice it exists to protect the employer, not to give you a paid break. Employers use it to:

Keep you away from confidential information, live deals and client relationships once you have resigned
Stop you taking up-to-date knowledge straight to a competitor
Keep you off the market: you are still their employee, so you cannot start with your new employer yet
Let your replacement settle in without you in the building

It is most common in sales, finance, law, recruitment and senior roles, anywhere client relationships and inside knowledge walk out of the door with the person.

Can my employer put me on garden leave?

Usually only if your contract contains a garden leave clause. Garden leave has no statutory definition; it is a creature of contract, so the starting point is always the wording you signed. A typical clause looks something like this:

"During any period of notice, the Company may in its absolute discretion require you not to attend the workplace, not to contact clients, suppliers or employees, and not to perform your duties, for all or part of the notice period. Your salary and contractual benefits will continue during this period."

If your contract has wording like that, your employer can lawfully send you home for some or all of your notice.

What if there is no garden leave clause?

The general legal position is that imposing garden leave without a contractual right to do so can put the employer in breach of contract. Some employees, particularly those whose skills, reputation or client base depend on actually doing the work, have a recognised interest in being given work, not just paid, and courts have found that sidelining them without a clause can breach the contract. (This comes from case law rather than legislation, so if it matters in your situation, take proper advice.)

Why does that matter? An employer who seriously breaches the contract risks losing the ability to enforce the restrictions in it, including post-termination covenants. That is exactly why well-advised employers put the clause in writing, and why you should know whether yours did.

💡 Pro tip: Check your contract now, not when you resign. If there is no garden leave clause, your employer's options during your notice are narrower than they may assume. If there is one, read what it actually permits.

Your rights during garden leave

You remain an employee for the whole of your garden leave. Acas is explicit: you are still employed even though you are not working, and must be paid as usual, including any work benefits in your contract. In practice:

Pay, benefits and bonus

You are entitled to your normal salary and contractual benefits for the full period: pension contributions, car allowance, private health cover and anything else your contract promises. Bonus and commission are murkier. Many schemes are discretionary, or require you to be "in active employment" and not under notice at the payment date, and those conditions are often enforceable. Your bonus clause decides whether resigning in January costs you the bonus paid in March, so check it before you time your resignation.

Holiday: it keeps accruing, and you can be made to take it

Statutory holiday accrues throughout employment, and garden leave is still employment, so your entitlement keeps building while you are at home. Two practical points:

Untaken statutory holiday left when your employment ends must be paid out.
Your employer can require you to take holiday during garden leave. An employer can tell staff when to take leave, provided they give notice at least twice as long as the leave itself (two weeks' notice for one week of holiday). Many garden leave clauses deal with this expressly.

Can you work elsewhere or start your new job?

Normally no. You are still employed, so your contractual duties continue, and almost every employment contract requires the employer's consent before you work for anyone else. Starting your new role during garden leave would typically breach your current contract, and joining a competitor is exactly what the garden leave exists to prevent. If your new employer is pushing for an early start, the honest answer is that your start date is the day after your notice expires, unless your current employer agrees in writing to release you early.

Can you be called back to work?

Often yes. Many clauses reserve the right to require you to return, answer questions or do handover tasks, because you remain an employee at their disposal. If your clause says that, plan around it: you are not on holiday, you are on standby.

Garden leave vs payment in lieu of notice (PILON)

Garden leave and PILON both take you out of the office during notice, but they are legally very different. With PILON, a clause in your contract allows the employer to pay you for your notice period instead of you working it, and your employment ends straight away. Without a PILON clause, the employer can ask you to agree, but cannot force it.

	Garden leave	PILON
Are you still employed?	Yes, until notice expires	No, employment ends immediately
Pay	Normal salary, paid as usual	Notice pay, usually as a lump sum
Benefits	Continue (pension, health cover etc.)	Unlikely to continue after the end date
Holiday	Keeps accruing	Stops accruing at termination
Start a new job?	Not until notice expires	Yes, subject to any restrictive covenants
Restrictive covenants	Apply during and after	Post-termination covenants start immediately

The practical difference: PILON frees you to move on sooner, garden leave pays you to wait. Which one your employer can use depends entirely on your contract, which is why both clauses are worth finding before you sign.

How long can garden leave last? Notice periods in the UK

Garden leave can only last as long as your notice period, because it is your notice period. When the notice expires, both the employment and the garden leave end. So the real question is how long your notice is:

Your contractual notice is whatever you agreed, commonly one month, and often three to six months in senior, sales or professional roles. Long notice periods usually exist precisely so the employer can park you on garden leave.
The statutory minimum you must give is at least one week once you have been employed for more than a month. Your contract can require more; most do.
The statutory minimum your employer must give you is one week after a month's service, then one week per full year from two to twelve years, capped at twelve weeks. Your contract can be more generous, never less.

If your contract is silent, the statutory minimums apply. If it has a six-month notice period and a garden leave clause, you can in principle spend six paid months at home before you are free to join a competitor. Whether that sounds like a paid sabbatical or a career freeze depends on your industry, which is why the notice period deserves scrutiny at offer stage, not on the way out.

Garden leave and your non-compete

Garden leave and post-termination restrictions do the same job for the employer, so courts look critically at how long the two run in combination. Restrictive covenants are contract terms that can stop you working for a competitor or contacting customers for a period after you leave, and breaching them can land you in court. But a covenant is only enforceable if it goes no further than reasonably necessary to protect a legitimate business interest.

Time spent on garden leave counts towards that assessment. Well-drafted contracts include a set-off clause that reduces the non-compete period by any time spent on garden leave. If yours stacks six months of garden leave on top of a twelve-month non-compete with no set-off, that combined restraint is the kind of thing an employee (or a court) can legitimately challenge. Our guide to restrictive covenants in UK employment contracts covers when each type holds up and when it is bluff. This area is fact-sensitive case law rather than statute, so treat it as a flag to investigate, not a rule to rely on.

What to check in your contract before you sign

The garden leave conversation is easiest to win before you are in it. When a new contract lands in your inbox, check these five things in the termination and restrictions sections:

Notice period, both ways. How much notice must you give, and how much must they give you? Is it proportionate, or is a long notice period really a garden leave weapon?
The garden leave clause. Is there one, and does it cover all of your notice or only part?
The PILON clause. Can they end your employment immediately with a payment, and does it cover salary only or benefits and bonus too?
Bonus and commission conditions. Do payments require you to be employed, and not under notice, on the payment date? This decides what resigning actually costs you.
Restrictive covenants and set-off. How long is the non-compete, does garden leave time reduce it, and how wide is the definition of "competitor"?

Most people skim these clauses because they sit at the back of the contract and read like boilerplate. They are not boilerplate; they decide how, when and at what cost you can leave. Our guide to what to check in a UK employment contract before you sign walks through the rest of the document.

If you would rather not decode the wording yourself, upload the contract to Ookulli's employment contract review. It flags the notice, garden leave, PILON, bonus and restriction clauses, explains each in plain English, and cites the exact clause and the UK law it is checked against, so you can see the reasoning rather than take an AI's word for it. And if you were about to paste the contract into a chatbot instead, read this first: uploading your offer letter to ChatGPT has privacy consequences a purpose-built tool avoids.

Garden leave FAQ

Is garden leave a bad thing?

For most employees, no. You are paid your full salary and benefits to not work. The downsides: you cannot start your new job yet, long absences can dull specialist skills and client relationships, and you remain on standby. Whether it is good or bad mostly depends on how long it lasts and how keen your next employer is to have you start.

Can I request garden leave?

You can ask, but you have no right to it. Garden leave is the employer's tool. If you would rather not work your notice, the alternatives are agreeing an early release, negotiating PILON, or using accrued holiday to shorten your time in the office.

Do I have to work my notice period?

Yes, unless your employer agrees otherwise. You must give at least a week's notice after a month's employment, and more if your contract says so. Walking out without serving it is a breach of contract, and your employer could in principle claim any losses it causes. In practice, many exits are negotiated: early release, holiday offset or garden leave.

Can my employer contact me during garden leave?

Yes. You are still an employee, so your employer can contact you, ask questions, require handover tasks and, if the clause allows, call you back to work. What they must also do is keep paying you as normal.

Why is it called garden leave?

Because you are notionally at home with nothing to do but the gardening. The term is informal, but the arrangement is contractually real: gov.uk itself uses "garden leave" for serving notice away from work.

This article is legal information, not legal advice. Garden leave and restrictive covenants are fact-sensitive, so if you are in a live dispute or a high-stakes exit, speak to a qualified employment solicitor.

About to sign, or about to resign? Upload your contract to Ookulli and get the notice, garden leave and non-compete clauses flagged and explained against UK law in minutes. Your first look is free, full reviews start from £10 per document with no subscription, and every review carries a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Garden leave and notice periods in the UK: your rights, pay and what your contract says