From 1 October 2026 the time limit for bringing most employment tribunal claims doubles from three months to six. The new limit applies where the date of the last act or failure falls on or after 1 October. Anything before that date keeps the three-month clock.
Why this matters more than it looks
The change itself is procedural. The consequence is not.
Today, if a dismissal goes unchallenged for three months, most employers stop thinking about it. From October, that window is twice as long — and the paperwork that would defend the decision needs to still exist when the claim lands.
Three months after a difficult exit, the manager who ran the process is usually still in post and still remembers it. Six months later, the manager may have left, the notes may have been cleared out, and the reasoning that made the decision defensible has gone with them.
Set a minimum six-month retention period on all dismissal-related correspondence and records. Investigation notes, meeting minutes, outcome letters, appeal papers and the contemporaneous reasoning behind the decision.
What to do now
Update your document retention policy so the retention period is longer than the claim window, not shorter. If your policy currently says three months for anything dismissal-adjacent, it is about to be actively harmful.
Second, tighten contemporaneous note-taking. A defence built six months later from memory is a weak defence. A defence built from notes written on the day is a strong one, and the difference is entirely in the habits of your managers.
Third, hold settlement and reference decisions a little longer before assuming the matter is closed. The file that was safe to close at week thirteen is no longer safe to close.
Early conciliation still applies and still pauses the clock. The extension changes the length of the window, not the process for using it.
The 1 October date comes from the government's implementation timeline of 16 July 2026 rather than a commencement order. Other dates in that timeline have shifted, so treat it as firm planning rather than settled law until the regulations appear.
Scotland
The 1 October date covers England, Wales and Scotland for most claims. Breach of employment contract claims in Scotland are the exception, moving to six months on 9 November 2026, because the order sits with Scottish Ministers rather than Westminster.
For a contract claim the clock runs from the date employment ends, not from the act complained of. A Scottish termination on 20 October 2026 therefore carries a three-month deadline for the contract claim and a six-month deadline for the unfair dismissal claim arising from the same dismissal. If you employ across the border, check which date applies to each workforce before assuming a file is closed.
Read this alongside January
On 1 January 2027 the unfair dismissal qualifying period drops from two years to six months. That is not a day-one right, despite widespread reporting to the contrary — but it does mean far more people become eligible to claim, and each of them will now have six months to do so.
Taken together, October and January widen both who can claim and how long they have. The defence for both is the same thing: better records, written at the time.