Breaking: employees will have six months to bring claims in an Employment Tribunal

The government has today (27 November 2024) published an amendment paper to the Employment Rights Bill which is currently making its way through parliament. It runs to 53 pages and lists all amendments which have (so far) been tabled.

It's going to take a while to go through all of these. However the most obvious change is a new provision which extends the time limits for employment-related claims to six months. 

Labour's manifesto pledge to Make Work Pay included a proposal to increase the time limit within which employees can bring an employment claim from three to six months. The original Bill didn't include this but the accompanying ‘Next Steps’ document stated, ‘measures to extend the time limit for bringing claims to Employment Tribunals will also be added via amendment’.

What are the current rules?

If an employee wishes to bring a claim in the Employment Tribunal, they usually have three months to do so from the act they are complaining about. Notable exceptions are:

• equal pay claims; and
• claims for statutory redundancy redundancy payments

where claimants' have six months to issue their claims. 

What is changing?

Claimants will have six months to bring all employment tribunal claims, including those relating to unfair dismissal, holiday pay and discrimination.

Why is this changing?

The government has accepted the findings of the Law Commission, which in 2020, recommended that the time limit for bringing all types of employment tribunal claims should be extended to six months. It said that bringing a claim within three months is difficult for a significant number of claimants, particularly if they wanted to pursue internal grievance procedures.

It also asked the government to consider whether the rules which allow tribunals to extend time are still fit for purpose. If a claimant doesn't issue some types of claim in time (such as unfair dismissal) a tribunal will only allow them to to continue if they are confident that it was ‘not reasonably practicable’ for them to meet the time limit. That's often very difficult to establish. Conversely, a tribunal has a far greater discretion when dealing with discrimination claims issued out of time where the test is whether it is ‘just and equitable’ to extend time. 

The government hasn't taken them up on this suggestion, nor was it included in its manifesto pledges.

When will this come into force?

Our best guess is that this provision will come into force some time in 2025 once the Bill is enacted. 

Claimants will still have to comply with Acas Early Conciliation before issuing most claims.

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