Notice period and redundancy: your rights in 2026/27
Redundancy pay gets most of the attention, but your notice period is a separate entitlement that's easy to overlook. It's a different pot of money, taxed a different way, and it can add up to weeks of extra pay on top of your redundancy. Getting the two straight matters when you're checking whether an offer is fair.
Statutory notice: the legal minimum
Everyone with at least a month's service is owed statutory notice when they're made redundant. The amount rises with your length of service. You get one week's notice for each complete year you've worked, up to a maximum of 12 weeks. So two years' service earns two weeks' notice, ten years earns ten weeks, and anyone with 12 or more years is capped at 12 weeks.
Here's how the statutory minimum builds up:
| Length of service | Statutory notice |
|---|---|
| 1 month to under 2 years | 1 week |
| 2 years | 2 weeks |
| 5 years | 5 weeks |
| 10 years | 10 weeks |
| 12 years or more | 12 weeks (the cap) |
That's the floor, not the ceiling. Your contract may promise more, and if it does, the contractual figure wins. Senior roles often carry three or six months' notice written into the contract, well beyond the statutory minimum.
Contractual notice vs statutory
You're always entitled to whichever is longer: your statutory notice or the notice in your contract. Check your written terms. If your contract says one month and you've got eight years' service, statutory gives you eight weeks, which beats the contractual month. The other way round, a contract promising three months trumps the shorter statutory figure.
Employers sometimes quote the contractual notice and hope you don't know the statutory minimum. If your service entitles you to more weeks than the contract mentions, say so. The law is on your side and the extra weeks are real money.
Working your notice or being paid in lieu
Once notice is served, your employer has choices. They can have you work through the notice period as normal, right up to your final day. They can pay you in lieu of notice, which means you leave straight away but get paid for the notice weeks as a lump sum. Or they can put you on garden leave, where you stay employed and paid but don't come in to work.
Pay in lieu of notice, often shortened to PILON, is common in redundancy because neither side gains much from keeping someone at their desk once the decision is made. You get the money either way. The difference is whether you're sat at work for those weeks or free to start job hunting.
Garden leave and why employers use it
Garden leave keeps you on the books but away from the workplace. You still get full pay, you still accrue holiday, and your benefits carry on. But you can't start a new job elsewhere while you're technically still employed, and you can't take clients or information with you. Employers use it to keep departing staff away from sensitive work or competitors during the notice window.
For you, garden leave is usually the comfortable option. Full pay, no work, and time to line up what's next. The catch is the restriction on starting elsewhere until your notice formally ends.
How notice pay is taxed
This is where notice pay and redundancy pay part company. Redundancy compensation is tax-free up to £30,000. Notice pay never is. Whether you work your notice or take it as a lump sum, it counts as earnings, so it's taxed through PAYE with both Income Tax and National Insurance deducted, just like a normal payslip.
Since 2018, every kind of notice pay is taxable, even where a contract stays silent on pay in lieu. HMRC works out a figure called post-employment notice pay to capture the earnings you'd have had if you'd worked the notice. There's no route to treating notice as part of the tax-free redundancy sum. Our guide on how redundancy pay is taxed goes through the full split of a package.
Worked example: 12 years' service on £600 a week
Take the same person from our redundancy calculator example: aged 45, 12 years' service, £600 a week. Their statutory redundancy comes to £8,400, paid tax-free. On top of that, 12 years' service earns the maximum 12 weeks' statutory notice.
Twelve weeks at £600 is £7,200 of notice pay. That £7,200 is taxable through PAYE. So the full picture looks like this:
| Payment | Amount | Tax |
|---|---|---|
| Statutory redundancy | £8,400 | Tax-free |
| Notice pay (12 weeks) | £7,200 | Taxed via PAYE |
| Total gross | £15,900 |
The redundancy element lands untouched. The £7,200 notice pay has Income Tax and National Insurance taken off before it reaches you. A basic-rate taxpayer keeps roughly £4,900 of that £7,200 after deductions, though the exact figure depends on the rest of your income for the year.
Holiday you haven't taken
Any holiday you've built up but not used gets paid out when you leave. Like notice pay, it counts as earnings and is taxed in full. It doesn't touch your £30,000 redundancy exemption. Check your leave balance before your last day, because employers occasionally miss accrued days, especially if you've been off sick or on other leave during the year.
Some employers ask you to use up outstanding holiday during your notice period instead of paying it out. That's allowed as long as they give you proper notice to take it. Either way you're not losing the days, it's just a question of whether they come as time off or as cash.
What happens if notice isn't honoured
If your employer cuts your notice short without paying for it, that's a breach of contract. You can claim the pay you were owed for the missing notice. For redundancy, this rarely comes up because most employers pay in lieu rather than risk a claim. But if it does happen, you have the same tribunal route open to you as for unpaid redundancy: raise it through ACAS early conciliation first, then a claim if it isn't resolved.
Keep your paperwork. Your contract, payslips, the redundancy letter and the date notice was given all matter if you end up disputing what you're owed. A clear record makes any claim far quicker to sort out.
Putting it together
Notice and redundancy are two separate entitlements that arrive at the same time. Redundancy pay rewards your length of service and comes tax-free up to £30,000. Notice pay covers the weeks between being told and actually leaving, and it's taxed as earnings. Add your accrued holiday on top and you've got the full value of what you're owed.
Work out your statutory redundancy first using the calculator, then add your notice weeks and any holiday. That gives you the real total to weigh any offer against. For the detail on the tax side, read redundancy tax explained, and for the redundancy formula itself see how redundancy pay is calculated.
The official guidance on notice periods sits at gov.uk, and ACAS covers your rights during redundancy at acas.org.uk.