When employers give notice





The minimum notice an employer must give an employee depends on how long they have been employed and is as follows: 





• one week, if their length of service is between one month and two years; or





• one week for each year if they have between two and 12 years’ service; or





• a maximum of 12 weeks if they have at least 12 years’ service.





The right to notice or notice pay is lost if the employee fundamentally breaches the employment contract by engaging in gross misconduct (known as summary dismissal). See page 345. 





It is a breach of contract for the employer not to give the full contractual notice. An employee can claim their notice pay in an employment tribunal or the civil court. No service is needed. This is also known as a claim for “wrongful dismissal”. 





Where an employee is dismissed (other than for gross misconduct) without being given their full statutory notice, the notice that should have been given is added to their period of continuous employment (see page 366) for the purposes of an unfair dismissal claim. This rule applies to statutory but not contractual notice.





Employers must use clear language when giving notice (Societe Generale v Geys [2012] UKSC 63). This date impacts on the “effective date of termination” (EDT) which is used to calculate whether a claim has been brought in time (see Effective date of Termination: page 363). 


In Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust v Haywood [2018] UKSC 22, the Supreme Court ruled that every employment contract contains an implied term that written notice runs from the date that notice is actually read by the intended recipient or, if earlier, the date on which they had a reasonable chance to read it. This implied term can be excluded by a clear express contract term that says something different, for example, that notice will be deemed to have been received within a specific number of days from posting.