Tribunal time limits double: every tech exit now needs a paper trail

From 1 October, the time limit for bringing most employment tribunal claims doubles from three months to six. The change is section 152 and Schedule 12 of the Employment Rights Act 2025, brought into force by the Employment Rights Act 2025 (Commencement No. 5 and Transitional Provisions) (Amendment) Regulations 2026 (SI 2026/954), which minister of state Kate Dearden signed on 1 September 2026. City AM reported on 30 September that the change is expected to bring more claims.

The obvious worry is volume. The government’s own final-stage impact assessment, dated March 2025, expected about 5,250 extra early conciliation notifications to Acas, the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service, and about 1,750 extra tribunal claims a year, at a handling cost to business of around £12.1m a year. The system those claims enter is already stretched. According to Ministry of Justice tribunal statistics published on 10 September, the open caseload of single employment tribunal claims reached 70,000 at the end of June 2026, the highest in the series and up 51% on a year earlier.

For UK technology employers, volume is the smaller problem. The larger one is duration. Dismissals, redundancies, disputed pay deductions and mishandled flexible-working requests from 1 October can be challenged within six months instead of three, and the claims join a queue that is lengthening. Single-claim receipts rose 28% in April to June against a year earlier while disposals fell 6%, the ministry says.

What an employer can prove months later depends on what its managers wrote down at the time. That makes the quality of records, consultations and exit processes the real exposure under this change.

Most claims now get six months

The Schedule to the regulations sets the relevant date for dozens of the complaints affected. They include unfair dismissal, discrimination at work under the Equality Act 2010, unlawful deductions from wages, complaints about how a flexible-working request was handled, failure to consult on collective redundancies and failure to inform or consult under the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 2006 (TUPE). Government guidance on business.gov.uk says the change brings most claims into line with statutory redundancy pay and equal pay claims, which already had six months. Breach of contract claims move on 1 October in England and Wales and on 9 November in Scotland, the same guidance says.

The change does not reach back. Regulation 4 says the longer limits do not apply where the “relevant date” falls before 1 October 2026. For unfair dismissal, that date is the effective date of termination, so an employee whose employment ended on 30 September still has three months, while one whose employment ends on 1 October has six. For discrimination, it is the date of the act or, for conduct extending over a period, the end of that period, so conduct that began in the summer and ends on or after 1 October falls under the new limit. For a collective consultation complaint, it is the date of the last dismissal.

Longer tails meet a growing backlog

Adam Grant, an employment partner at Wedlake Bell, told City AM that disputes are likely to stay live for longer, so employers will need to hold on to documents and manage witnesses for longer. Dipti Shah, partner and head of employment law at Quastels, told the paper that the employers that cope best will be those able to evidence what staff heard, the reasons behind each decision and the steps taken before a dispute grew – “a cultural shift as much as a legal one”.

The next step raises the stakes. The GOV.UK timeline says the qualifying period for unfair dismissal falls to six months for dismissals from 1 January 2027, when compensatory awards are also uncapped. From then, employees with shorter service can claim, without the old ceiling on compensation, and they have six months to do it. A manager who runs a restructuring this autumn may have left the business by the time a claim is heard.

Records made now carry the risk

None of this needs new policy. It needs existing processes to leave a better trail. Before the next exit, people leaders should tighten five things.

• Reasons, written at the time. Every dismissal and redundancy decision should carry a dated note of the criteria, the scores, who decided and why, with the deciding manager’s account taken in writing before they move on. A performance exit built on unrecorded conversations will be harder to defend at six months than it was at three.
• Consultation files. Collective redundancy and TUPE consultations should keep minutes, attendance and the answers given to staff. The regulations take the last dismissal as the relevant date for a collective consultation complaint, so a program whose last dismissal falls on or after 1 October comes under the new limit.
• Pay deductions. For a series of deductions, the regulations take the last one as the relevant date. Commission clawbacks and recovered training costs should have their basis on file.
• Retention schedules. Leavers’ email, chat and HR records set to be deleted after three months should be reviewed against the six-month window.
• Handbooks and letters. Government guidance tells employers to update policy documents and handbooks that still refer to three months.

The employers most exposed from 1 October are not the ones that let the most people go. They are the ones whose managers decide in conversations and record nothing. Six months is long enough for memories to fade and managers to leave, and the file has to stand up without them.