The employment tribunal clock is changing: what the new six-month claim limit means for employers and employees

For years, one of the first questions in almost any potential Employment Tribunal matter has been: when did it happen?

From 1 October 2026, the time limit for most Employment Tribunal claims increases from three months minus one day to six months minus one day where the relevant time limit starts on or after that date. More time is useful. Neither employers nor employees should treat it as permission to do nothing for six months.

The change is significant because limitation has always shaped the pace of employment disputes. It affects when an employee must decide whether to pursue a claim, when Acas Early Conciliation needs to be started and how long an employer may need to preserve records after a dismissal or other disputed event.

What is actually changing?

For most claims, the ordinary Employment Tribunal limitation period is moving from three months minus one day to six months minus one day. That includes many of the claims most commonly encountered in workplace disputes, such as unfair dismissal, discrimination and other statutory employment-rights claims.

The starting date depends on the type of claim. For unfair dismissal it will usually be the effective date of termination. For discrimination it may be the date of the discriminatory act, or the end of conduct said to form a continuing course. Pay, whistleblowing and other claims have their own rules.

Not every tribunal deadline is therefore simply “six months”. Some claims and applications have different time limits, including very short limits in particular situations. The safer approach is always to identify the potential claim first and then calculate the relevant deadline.

The transition date matters

The new six-month period generally applies where the relevant time limit starts on or after 1 October 2026. That means the boundary between 30 September and 1 October can matter.

An employee whose effective date of termination is 30 September may therefore be working with a different ordinary limitation period from somebody whose employment ends on 1 October. The position can become more complicated where there is a series of acts or failures, continuing conduct, more than one potential claim, or uncertainty over the date on which the cause of action arose.

That is why transitional cases should not be dealt with by simply adding six months to the latest date in the chronology. Identify the claim, identify the legally relevant date, and calculate from there.

Acas Early Conciliation still matters

In most cases, somebody considering an Employment Tribunal claim must first notify Acas. That notification should be made within the applicable limitation period.

If Acas is notified in time, Early Conciliation can pause the limitation clock. Once Early Conciliation ends, the claimant will generally have at least one month from receipt of the certificate to present the claim, although the precise calculation can be more complicated depending on when notification was made and when the original deadline would otherwise have expired.

The longer underlying limitation period does not remove the need to calculate Early Conciliation correctly. It simply gives most claimants more time before that process needs to have been started.

Read the current Acas guidance on Employment Tribunal time limits →

A grievance does not stop the tribunal clock

Raising a grievance, pursuing an appeal or waiting for an employer's internal investigation does not, by itself, stop the Employment Tribunal limitation clock.

That has always been an important point and remains so after 1 October. The extra time may make it more realistic for some internal processes to conclude before a claimant needs to decide what to do next, but it does not convert an internal procedure into a limitation extension.

For employees, the sensible approach is therefore to run the two questions separately: what should happen internally, and what is the external legal deadline? For employers, it is equally important not to give somebody inaccurate reassurance that “the grievance is still ongoing, so the tribunal deadline will wait”.

For employees: more time is not a reason to wait

Where a dispute may become a claim, use the additional time to get the position organised rather than to postpone it.

• Identify when the relevant event or events occurred.
• Do not assume that a grievance, appeal or internal investigation extends the tribunal deadline.
• Preserve material you are lawfully entitled to retain.
• Prepare an accurate chronology while events are still fresh.
• Identify what the potential claims actually are, because different rules can apply.
• Obtain advice early where the position is uncertain.
• Remember that Acas Early Conciliation affects the limitation calculation.

Six months may feel generous compared with the old three-month period. It can still disappear quickly where somebody is dealing with a dismissal, looking for work, pursuing an appeal, waiting for documents or simply trying to decide whether litigation is worthwhile.

For employers: preserve the file when employment ends

If there is a realistic possibility of litigation, preserve the file before people scatter and systems move on.

Do not wait for an Acas notification before checking whether the evidence still exists. A useful departure or dispute review may include the contract and relevant policies; investigation, disciplinary and grievance material; meeting notes; emails; Teams, Slack, WhatsApp or text messages where relevant and lawfully held; rotas; absence and payroll records; CCTV where it may matter; documents recording the decision and reasons for it; comparable cases; and the names of people who witnessed relevant events.

It is also worth checking automatic deletion rules. Messages, CCTV and collaboration-platform data can disappear because of ordinary retention settings long before anybody realises they are likely to become evidence.

A short chronology and contemporaneous witness note prepared while events are fresh can be disproportionately valuable months later. It does not need to become a litigation bundle. It simply needs to leave a reliable record of what happened, who made which decision and where the supporting evidence is held.

Reconstruction later is possible — but expensive

When a matter reaches us months after the event, the first job is often not legal analysis at all. It is reconstruction.

Emails have moved into archives, managers have left, somebody's memory of the meeting differs from the notes, the reason for a decision has never been written down, and key messages are sitting in a personal phone or have been deleted under a routine retention policy. The legal question may eventually be quite narrow, but getting to a reliable factual record can consume far more time than preserving it properly at the outset.

It can be done. It can also be expensive.

From 1 October 2026, employers potentially have twice as long before many tribunal claims become time-barred. That should not mean waiting twice as long to prepare for one.

Aubrey International can assist with early employment-process review, evidence and chronology work, and reconstruction where a matter has already become fragmented. The objective is to identify the real issues and create a usable record before avoidable gaps become the most difficult part of the case.

Information note: This article provides general information on employment law in England and Wales. It is not legal advice on any individual matter. Tribunal limitation can be complex and different claims or applications may have different rules, so specific deadlines should be checked on their own facts.