Statutory notice period UK: how much and when

Your statutory notice period is the legal minimum your employer must give you before your employment ends: one week once you have a month's service, then one week for each complete year from two years, up to a cap of 12 weeks. It comes from section 86 of the Employment Rights Act 1996, and it applies to employees. If you are a worker or genuinely self-employed, it usually does not apply to you at all.

That single sentence hides two numbers your contract should already have told you, and one date it almost certainly has not. The numbers are the notice you must give and the notice you are entitled to receive. The date is the day your notice actually starts running, which is the difference between leaving on the 30th and leaving on the 31st, and between one more month of pay and none.

This guide answers the entitlement question rather than the definition one: how much notice you are owed, who is owed it, how your service is counted, and when the clock starts.

Key takeaways

• Statutory notice from your employer is one week from one month's service, then one week per complete year from two years, capped at 12 weeks (Employment Rights Act 1996, section 86).

• You owe your employer one week once you have a month's service, however long you have been there. Your contract can ask for more, and usually does.

• Statutory notice is an employee right. Workers "usually are not entitled to" it, and self-employed people have only what their contract says.

• You get the statutory minimum or your contractual notice, whichever is longer. A contract can beat the floor and can never go below it.

• If your contract does not say when notice starts, Acas puts it at the day after you were told, not the day itself.

How much statutory notice are you owed?

It depends on one thing only: how long you have been continuously employed. Length of service, not seniority, salary or job title.

The years have to be complete ones. Acas gives the worked example: someone with four years and nine months' service is entitled to four weeks, not five. The nine months count for nothing here, which is why an employment ending a few weeks before an anniversary is worth checking rather than accepting.

Your own obligation is much smaller and it never grows. Section 86(2) requires you to give at least one week's notice once you have a month's service, and that stays at one week whether you have been there 13 months or 13 years. Everything above a week that you are asked to serve comes from your contract, not from the law.

The same figures apply if you are made redundant. Gov.uk sets out the statutory redundancy notice periods in identical terms, and adds the point people most often miss: your notice pay in that situation is based on the average you earned per week over the 12 weeks before your notice period started, so a run of low-commission months before an exit has a real cost attached to it.

Who gets statutory notice, and who does not

This is where a lot of readers stop being covered, and it is the part almost no guide leads with.

Employees get it. Section 86 is written around "an employee who has been continuously employed for one month or more". Gov.uk lists "minimum notice periods if their employment will be ending" among the rights that employees have and workers do not.

Workers usually do not. Gov.uk is blunt about it: workers "usually are not entitled to" minimum notice periods. Acas adds the practical test, noting that someone is not likely to be an employee if they are an agency worker, a casual worker, or on a zero-hours contract. If that is you, what you are owed is whatever your contract promises, and often that is nothing. Our guide to what to check in a zero-hours contract covers the rest of that gap.

The genuinely self-employed do not, at all. If you are a freelancer or contractor on a service agreement, gov.uk's position is that employment law does not cover you in most cases, and your rights are "the rights and responsibilities set out by the terms of the contract they have with their client". There is no floor underneath you. A service agreement that lets the client walk away on a day's notice is enforceable in a way the same clause in an employment contract would not be, which is why the termination clause matters far more in a freelance contract than in an employment one, and why we treat it separately in our guide to termination clauses in UK contracts.

💡 Pro tip: your status is decided by what the working relationship actually looks like, not by the word printed at the top of the contract. A document headed "consultancy agreement" that requires you personally to work set hours under supervision may not make you self-employed. If your notice entitlement turns on it, that question is worth answering properly before you rely on the answer.

How your continuous service is counted

Two years and 12 years are the thresholds that change your entitlement, so how the counting works decides real money.

• It starts on the day you started work, not the day you signed. Section 211 puts the beginning of continuous employment at "the day on which the employee starts work".
• Months and years mean calendar ones. Section 210 defines a month as a calendar month and a year as 12 calendar months, so you are not counting 52-week blocks.
• Continuity is presumed in your favour. Section 210(5) says employment "shall, unless the contrary is shown, be presumed to have been continuous". If someone claims a gap broke your service, the burden of showing it sits with them.
• Time with a previous employer can count. Where a business changes hands, service can carry across with it, and where it does your clock does not restart.

You should not have to reconstruct any of this yourself. Your written statement of employment particulars has to state the date your period of continuous employment began, taking into account any earlier employment that counts towards it. That document is also where your two notice figures live, because section 1(4)(e) requires it to set out the length of notice you are "obliged to give and entitled to receive". It has to be given to you no later than the first day of the job. If yours does not carry those three facts, that is a statutory gap, not an administrative one.

Statutory or contractual notice: which one applies

Whichever is longer. The statutory figure is a floor, so a contract offering three months where the law requires three weeks simply gives you three months. A contract offering a week where the law requires eight does not reduce you to a week, and Acas states the rule plainly: an employer "may give more notice than the statutory minimum, but they cannot give the employee less".

If your contract says nothing at all about notice, the statutory minimum is what you have. For an employee that is a workable answer. For a self-employed person it is not an answer at all, because there is no statutory minimum to fall back on and the common-law position, that "reasonable notice" applies, is vague enough to be worth arguing about at exactly the wrong moment.

There is one more layer, and it is the part that surprises people, because a more generous contract switches it off.

Sections 88 to 91 of the Act give employees on statutory notice a guaranteed level of pay through it: if you are ready and willing to work and none is provided, or you are off sick, or on family leave, or on holiday, your employer must still pay you at your normal rate for those hours, and any sick pay or statutory sick pay counts towards that rather than replacing it. But section 87(4) removes that protection entirely where your employer's contractual notice is at least one week longer than the statutory figure. On three years' service, statutory notice is three weeks, so a contract giving one month is already past that line.

In practice this bites in one situation. You fall ill during your notice period and your contract only promises statutory sick pay. Someone sitting on the statutory floor gets topped up to full pay for that time. Someone on a longer contractual notice does not, unless their contract says so. Read your sick pay clause and your notice clause together, because that pairing decides what a bad final month is actually worth.

When does your notice period actually start?

Your contract decides, and if it is silent, Acas puts the start at the day after you tell your employer you are resigning, or the day after your employer tells you in person that you are being dismissed or made redundant. The day of the conversation itself does not count.

Written notice works differently. Acas treats the period as starting once you have had a reasonable amount of time to read it, so a letter sent by post while you are away starts running when you are back and have had the chance to open it, not when it landed on the mat. If a leaving date has been calculated from the postmark, that is worth querying.

This matters more than it sounds. A single day can move your termination date across a month end, across a bonus payment date, or across a service anniversary that would have added a week to what you are owed.

When you do not get your full notice

Four situations end the notice period early or replace it, and only one of them is a genuine loss of entitlement.

1. Gross misconduct. Where an employer is entitled to dismiss you for gross misconduct, Acas is clear that you would not be entitled to the statutory notice period or any payment for it. Section 86(6) preserves that right to treat the contract as ended without notice because of the other party's conduct. It cuts both ways: if your employer seriously breaches your contract, you may be able to leave without working your notice.
2. You agree to something shorter. Section 86(3) expressly allows either side to waive notice or accept a payment instead, and Acas notes an employer and employee can agree to reduce it where it suits both. Put any such agreement in writing.
3. You are paid instead of working it. That is payment in lieu of notice, which ends your employment immediately and pays out the notice you would have served. It is not a reduction in what you are owed, it is the same entitlement in cash, and whether your employer can impose it depends on the clause.
4. You serve it away from the workplace. That is garden leave: you stay employed on full pay until your notice expires, you just do not come in. Your entitlement is untouched, but you cannot start your next job while it runs.

If your employer simply gives you less notice than you are owed, raise it in writing first. Where that does not resolve it, Acas points to a wrongful dismissal claim at an employment tribunal, or in the county court in England and Wales or the sheriff court in Scotland.

What to check in your contract before you need this

Five things, and all five are readable in ten minutes on the day the contract arrives rather than on the day you resign.

1. Both notice figures. What you must give, and what you must receive. If they are wildly uneven, that is the negotiation.
2. Your employer's figure against the statutory floor. Work out your entitlement from the table above and check the contract beats it. Anything below the floor does not bind you.
3. The start date of continuous employment, on your written statement. It decides which row of that table you are on.
4. Notice during probation. Probation clauses commonly set a shorter notice period, but the statutory floor still applies once you have a month's service. We set out what a probationary period clause can and cannot change separately.
5. The sick pay clause, next to the notice clause. Because of section 87(4), a longer contractual notice period can remove the statutory guarantee of full pay while you are ill during it.

💡 Pro tip: the two most valuable minutes here are spent on the written statement rather than the contract. It is the one document that has to name your continuous employment start date, and that date, not your memory of when you joined, is what your entitlement is calculated from.

If you would rather not work through the wording yourself, upload the document to Ookulli's employment contract review. It reads the notice, probation, sick pay and termination clauses together, tells you in plain English what each one means for you, and cites the exact clause and the UK law it was checked against, so you can see the reasoning rather than take an AI's word for it. For the rest of the document, our guide to what to check in a UK employment contract before you sign covers the clauses this page does not.

Statutory notice period FAQ

How much notice does my employer have to give me in the UK?

At least one week once you have been employed for a month, then one week for each complete year of service from two years, capped at 12 weeks after 12 years or more. If your contract gives you more, you get the contractual figure instead. If it gives you less, the statutory minimum still applies, because a contract cannot go below it.

Does statutory notice apply if I am self-employed or a contractor?

No. Statutory notice is an employee right, and gov.uk's position is that employment law does not cover self-employed people in most cases. Your notice is whatever your service agreement says, and if it says nothing, you are left arguing about what "reasonable notice" means. That is the single strongest reason to insist on a written notice period before you start a piece of client work.

Do I get statutory notice during my probation period?

Yes, once you have one month's continuous service. A probation clause can set a shorter contractual notice period, and many do, but it cannot take you below the statutory minimum. In your first month, before the statutory floor applies, whatever your contract says is all you have.

What notice do I have to give when I resign?

One week, once you have a month's service, unless your contract asks for more, and most professional contracts do. Acas notes that if you have worked less than a month and your written statement does not state a notice period, you do not have to give any notice at all. Leaving without serving the notice your contract requires is a breach of it, so the usual route is to agree something in writing instead.

What can I do if my employer gives me less notice than I am owed?

Raise it with them in writing first, setting out your service and the figure you calculate from section 86. Acas suggests dealing with it informally before anything else. If that fails, short notice is a breach of contract, and the claim is for wrongful dismissal at an employment tribunal, or in the county court in England and Wales or the sheriff court in Scotland.

This article is legal information, not legal advice. The rules described here come from the Employment Rights Act 1996, which applies in England, Wales and Scotland; Northern Ireland has separate equivalent legislation. If you are mid-exit, in a dispute, or unsure of your employment status, speak to a qualified employment solicitor.

Not sure what your contract actually owes you? Upload it to Ookulli and get the notice, probation and termination 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 paid review carries a 30-day money-back guarantee.