Six months to claim: why the new tribunal time limit changes less than it appears

From 1 October 2026, the time limit for bringing most employment tribunal claims doubles from three months to six. On paper it is one of the more employee-friendly measures in the Employment Rights Act 2025, and most of the commentary written for employers has treated it that way. Having dealt with a large number of employee exits and tribunal claims, my view is that for most small and medium-sized businesses it will change rather little. The reasons are worth setting out, because they say something about how employment disputes actually end.

What is changing

At present most tribunal claims, including unfair dismissal, discrimination, whistleblowing, and unlawful deductions from wages, must be started within three months (strictly, three months less a day) of the dismissal or the act complained of. The government's impact assessment counts about 148 statutory rights that carry a three-month limit. The Act, together with the Employment Tribunal (Extension of Time Limits) (Miscellaneous Amendments and Transitional Provisions) Regulations 2026, moves them to six months. A separate Order does the same for breach of contract claims brought in the tribunal in England and Wales. Redundancy pay and equal pay claims already had six months, so in one sense this is a tidying-up exercise.

The new limit applies only where the act complained of happens on or after 1 October 2026. Someone dismissed on 30 September has three months. Someone dismissed on 1 October has six. Where the complaint is about a series of acts, the last of them must fall on or after 1 October. The transitional rules are in regulation 10.

Two things stay the same. A claimant must still notify Acas before issuing a claim, and the clock still pauses during early conciliation, which since December 2025 can run for up to twelve weeks. And tribunals keep their existing discretion to extend time.

None of this was dreamt up recently. The Law Commission recommended a six-month limit in April 2020, pointing out that the three-month rule dates from a time when tribunals were meant to be a quick, informal alternative to the courts. They are no longer either of those things.

The case for concern

I do not want to wave the change away. A dispute that appears to have gone quiet will now stay live for twice as long. Add up to twelve weeks of conciliation and the time it takes the tribunal to serve a claim, and an employer could first hear of proceedings the better part of nine months after a dismissal. By then memories have faded, the manager involved may have left, and the emails may have been archived or deleted.

The government's own figures also predict more claims. Acas data suggests about 5% of early conciliation notifications are potentially out of time under the current rule. The impact assessment assumes a 5% uplift: roughly 5,250 more notifications and 1,750 more tribunal claims a year, at a cost to the employer of around £6,000 for each claim defended. It accepts that small and micro businesses may feel this disproportionately.

Employer bodies have been critical of the Act as a whole. The CIPD reports that 37% of employers plan to reduce permanent recruitment because of at least one of its reforms. But the reforms it asked about were unfair dismissal, statutory sick pay, zero-hours contracts, and trade union rights. The time limit was not among them.

Why I think the dial barely moves

The numbers, in context. Tribunals received about 50,000 single claims in 2025/26, up 39% on the year before, with no change to any time limit. Against that, 1,750 extra claims is about 3.5%. Whatever is driving claims upwards, it is not the limitation period.

People who are going to claim tend to claim quickly. An unfair dismissal claim is usually a reaction to being dismissed, and the reaction comes early. The same is true of most discrimination complaints that someone feels strongly about. In my experience the claimant who misses the deadline is the exception, and the 5% figure bears that out: the other 95% are already in time.

Discrimination claims were never really confined to three months. Under section 123 of the Equality Act 2010, conduct extending over a period is treated as done at the end of that period, so a claimant who can show a continuing state of affairs (the test from Hendricks v Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis) brings in events from well before the final three months. Whether there was a continuing act depends on the facts, which is why tribunals are generally reluctant to decide the point at a preliminary hearing. Those claims tend to go to a full hearing with the time point still attached. On top of that, the tribunal can extend time where it is just and equitable. So in the claims employers fear most, the three-month limit gave less protection than the statute suggested. Unfair dismissal is different: the 'not reasonably practicable' test for a late claim is strict. But those are exactly the claimants who tend to move fast.

Most disputes never reach a hearing. Acas reports that 68% of early conciliation notifications in October to December 2025 did not become tribunal claims at all. Of the claims that were issued, 80% did not reach a hearing in January to March 2026; Acas settled about 69% of those and the rest were withdrawn. There are no official figures for settlement agreements, because they are private, but in my experience that is how most disputes of any size end, often before Acas has heard of them. In the early months of a job, an unhappy employee will often simply resign.

The backlog does more than any time limit. The open caseload of single claims reached 70,000 at the end of June 2026, the highest in the published series. In that quarter tribunals received about 14,000 single claims and disposed of 6,100. In my experience final hearings are now being listed two or three years out. Nobody designed the backlog to encourage settlement, but that is its effect: both sides look at the wait and the cost and reach for a deal. Set against a delay of years at the back end, three more months at the front end is a small thing.

There is also something in the government's argument that a longer limit may reduce claims at the margin. Under the three-month rule, an employee often has to start conciliation or issue a claim to protect their position while a grievance or appeal is still running. Six months leaves room for the internal process to finish first.

The change that matters more arrives in January

If you are thinking about what the Act means for hiring, the date to watch is 1 January 2027. For dismissals from that date, the qualifying period for unfair dismissal falls from two years to six months, and the cap on the compensatory award goes. That is a change of substance. It bears directly on probation periods and on how early performance problems are managed, and it deserves a memo of its own. The October change is procedural by comparison: it alters when a claim can arrive, not whether there is a claim.

What I would do

• Keep dismissal, grievance, and disciplinary records for at least twelve months after someone leaves, and make sure the notes are written at the time.
• Stop treating three months of silence as the end of the matter.
• Deal with problems in the working relationship early. That is a management job before it is a legal one.
• Where the relationship has broken down, remember that a settlement agreement gives a certainty that no limitation period ever will.
• Note the cut-off: the six-month limit applies to acts on or after 1 October 2026.

The vast majority of hires never come anywhere near a tribunal. For the few that do, the outcome is shaped far more by how the exit was handled, and by how long the tribunal takes to hear the case, than by whether the employee had three months or six to start it.

This memo is general comment and not legal advice.