Less One Day

There is a deadline. It is shorter than you think, it started on a day you were not thinking about deadlines, and if you miss it the tribunal will not hear your claim however badly you were treated.

Section 111(2)(a) of the Employment Rights Act 1996 gives you three months "beginning with the effective date of termination". Beginning with. The day you were dismissed is day one, so it is three months less one day, and almost every other deadline in your life works the other way.

Then it gets harder. ACAS early conciliation is compulsory before you can file at all, and section 18A(8) means you cannot present a claim without the certificate. Two separate subsections then pause the clock: one takes out the conciliation days, the other guarantees you a month after the certificate. You get the benefit of both, and most people apply one and underestimate their own deadline.

And if you are late, what happens depends on which claim it is.

• Unfair dismissal and wages use "not reasonably practicable". Narrow, and it has two hurdles, not one.
• Discrimination uses "just and equitable", which the Court of Appeal in Abertawe calls "the widest possible discretion".
• So the same person, on the same facts, with the same delay, can lose one claim and keep the other.

Thirty-six short chapters on one deadline. How to find the date it runs from. The trap in section 97(2), which extends the effective date of termination for the qualifying period and the basic award but not for the time limit. The arithmetic worked through four times, including the case where the two conciliation rules give different answers. What to do if the deadline has already gone. And what actually changes on 1 January 2027, which is not what the coverage said: the qualifying period drops to six months, not day one.

Written for the twelve weeks before there is anything to have a hearing about, because that is where claims are lost, in silence, by people who never find out.

Great Britain. Nothing is sold in it and free help is named.