Employment tribunal time limits in the UK have doubled: is your business prepared?

The tribunal time limit has doubled – and the impact is bigger than it looks.

If you dismissed an employee ten months ago, you might think that the chance of a claim against you has now well and truly passed. Until recently that might have been true. But on 1 October 2026, the time limit for bringing most employment tribunal claims doubled from three months to six – covering unfair dismissal, discrimination and all other claims, including breach of contract. On paper, this is a modest procedural change. In practice, it adds to a number of factors that are slowing down the time it takes for employers to learn of claims against them and changes how employers need to manage risk, preserve evidence and handle the long wait in between. This article explains why.

Six months is rarely six months

In most cases the time limit applies to the date the employee needs to begin the mandatory pre claim Acas early conciliation process. Once launched, this process can currently last up to three months, and the time limit clock stops while it runs. That alone can stretch the window to around nine months from dismissal.

Once Acas issues its certificate, the claimant has a further month to lodge the claim, potentially taking the total to ten months. The tribunal must then process the claim form and serve it on you, which, given the current backlog, can take another couple of months. The result of that is it could be close to a year before an ET1 lands on your desk.

Under the old regime, if nothing had arrived by month four or five, most employers could reasonably treat the matter as closed. That comfort has gone. Silence at six, eight or even ten months now tells you very little. The claim may not yet have been issued, may be sitting with Acas, or may be caught in the tribunal backlog.

In practice, you may carry the risk of a claim for most of a year without knowing whether one is coming. Risk assessment therefore needs to start earlier.  You can no longer wait for a claim to land to tell you whether a dispute matters.

The quiet risk of deletion

Many organisations built their document retention systems around the old three-month window, often without realising it. Think email purges, Teams and Slack deletion cycles, CCTV overwrite schedules, and managers' notes forgotten a few months after a grievance or appeal concludes.

The law on retaining documents has not changed, but how long you are likely to need them has. For anything linked to a dismissal, grievance or contested decision, twelve months is now the sensible minimum, and we would advise building in a margin on top.

That does not mean switching off deletion altogether. Under Article 5(1)(e) of the UK GDPR, personal data should not be kept for longer than necessary, although no fixed time limit applies. Keeping records to defend a potential claim is a legitimate reason, but it should be reflected in your retention policy and covered by your privacy notices. Bear in mind that anything you keep may also be caught by a subject access request.

The real danger is deletion, and manual deletion is as much a risk as automated deletion. Evidence can disappear before anyone realises it matters, whether through a system purge or a manager clearing out their mailbox. The answer is not simply to ask HR to keep things for longer. Bring HR, Legal, IT and your data protection lead together, and make sure managers are kept in the loop on retention. The people who write the policy are rarely the people who configure the systems or hold the documents, and the risk sits in the gap between them.

Witnesses and fading memories

A lot can change in a year. Managers move on, colleagues leave and, even for those who stay, memories fade.

A short note made at the time is now worth far more than a careful reconstruction months later. Record why decisions were made. Identify likely witnesses early and keep their contact details. These small habits are not particularly time consuming and can make a real difference if a claim does arrive.

Mitigation: what has the employee been doing?

A dismissed employee must take reasonable steps to mitigate their loss, in practice, this means looking for work. The longer window makes this more significant. If a claim arrives nine or ten months after dismissal, it is fair to ask how that time was spent. Have they been looking for roles? Have they applied for any? If not, their compensation may be reduced.

This does not mean an employee has to do everything possible to find another job. The question is whether they took reasonable steps. If you say they did not, it is for you to prove that the employee acted unreasonably.

It is therefore sensible to keep a record of suitable vacancies you come across in the months after dismissal, particularly if the employee has raised concerns about the availability of suitable work. This may help if there is later a dispute about whether they did enough to find another job.

The longer window can have other implications too. An employee who has already found a new job may have limited losses and may decide the stress of a claim is no longer worth it.

You can assist in this. Funding outplacement support and/or providing a reference (where it is appropriate to do so) can help the employee back into work and towards mitigating their losses. Neither requires a settlement agreement or any admission of liability and, in the right case, can be a better route than a settlement offer.

Remember that a refusal to provide a reference if you ordinarily would do so might lead to a separate victimisation claim if the refusal seemed to be linked to a claim being brought. The deadline for bringing that claim would be six months from the refusal or less favourable reference, not the original dismissal.

The waiting period is not dead time

The months before a claim arrives are often when a case is won or lost on the evidence. In practical terms:

• Review your retention and deletion settings now, in line with your data protection obligations, and ensure managers know not to delete relevant material manually.
• Train managers to record key decisions as they make them.
• Identify witnesses early and keep their contact details.
• Keep a record of suitable roles advertised after a dismissal, in case mitigation becomes an issue.
• Keep grievances and appeals moving – a longer window is no reason to slow the internal process.

Not every dispute will become a claim. Some employees will move on, find new roles or simply lose interest. You cannot know in advance which disputes will fall away, so the sensible approach is the same either way: protect your position now, rather than wait to find out.

Quick Q&A

Does the six-month limit apply to dismissals before 1 October 2026?

Generally, no. The new limit applies where the 'relevant date', usually the act complained of, or the last act in a series, falls on or after 1 October 2026.

What about ongoing conduct, such as discrimination?

This is less clear-cut. Where an ongoing course of conduct is alleged, time may run from the end of that conduct, potentially bringing earlier events into scope.

How long could we realistically be waiting?

Almost ten months before a claim must be issued: six months, plus up to twelve weeks of early conciliation, plus one month after the Acas certificate. Tribunal processing time then comes on top.

Does paying for outplacement look like an admission of fault?

No. It can be offered without a settlement agreement and expressly without any admission of liability.

If the employee has found a new job, is that the end of it?

Not necessarily. Their loss of earnings may stop or reduce, but the claim can still go ahead, particularly if any new job is on lower pay. Some awards, such as injury to feelings in discrimination claims, do not depend on lost earnings. Even so, a new job often takes the heat out of a dispute.

Should we settle early to avoid the uncertainty?

Only if it makes commercial sense. The passage of time alone is not a reason to make an offer.

If you would like advice on managing risk under the new time limits, updating your retention policies, responding to a reference request or any other employment matter, please get in touch.

We recently hosted a webinar on this change and its implications, which you can watch here. Passcode: 5*7&xyd3 

This article is authored by Elle Bentham Sorohan, associate, and Christina Morton, senior knowledge lawyer, in the UK employment team.