Forthcoming Legislation
Notes
(a) There is no qualifying period where a woman is dismissed during pregnancy or during ordinary or additional maternity leave periods (S.92(4) ER Act).
(b) For these purposes ‘date of dismissal’ means (a) where the employee’s contract of employment was terminated by notice, the date on which the employer’s notice was given, and (b) in any other case, the EDT – S.238(5) TULR Act.
© Starting on 18th birthday if the employee started work before that date.
(d) If during those six months the employee gives a written notice to the employer claiming a redundancy payment or refers a redundancy pay claim to a tribunal or submits a claim for unfair dismissal to a tribunal. The time limit may be extended to one year if during the six months immediately following the first six-month period the employee makes a written claim for payment to the employer or refers a redundancy pay claim to a tribunal or presents an unfair dismissal claim to a tribunal and it appears to the tribunal to be just and equitable that the employee should receive a redundancy payment – S.164 ER Act. It may also be extended to one year if the employee dies during the six months following the relevant date – S.176(7) ER Act.
(e) Unless the claimant was employed under a fixed-term contract for three months or less or a contract for the performance of a specific task which was not expected to last more than three months in which case he or she must have been continuously employed for more than three months in order to qualify.
(f) At the beginning of the 11th week before the expected week of childbirth.
(g) However, an act may be treated as done at the end of a period if it is an act ‘extending over’ that period (S.76(6)(b) SD Act/S.68(7)(b) RR Act/Sch 3 para 3(3)(b) DD Act) – see Barclays Bank plc v Kapur & ors 1991 ICR 208.
(h) There are no expressly stated time limits governing actions under EC law. Time limits will generally be analogous to those under national law, i.e three months under the EC Equal Treatment Directive (No.76/207), and three or six months under Article 141 of the EC Treaty and the EC Equal Pay Directive (No.75/117). In Biggs v Somerset County Council 1996 ICR 364 (Brief 559) a part-time employee brought a claim for unfair dismissal compensation relying on R v Secretary of State for Employment ex parte EOC & anor 1994 IRLR 176 (Brief 513), in which the House of Lords ruled that the qualifying hours thresholds in UK legislation were contrary to Article 141. The Court of Appeal held that the relevant national time limit of three months began to run against the applicant from the date of her dismissal in the 1970s.
i) The House of Lords confirmed the legality of the six-month time limit in Preston & ors v Wolverhampton Healthcare NHS Trust & ors (No 2); Fletcher & ors v Midland Bank plc (No 2) 2001 ICR 217, except in cases involving the application of the time limit to employees working on a succession of fixed-term contracts.
(j) No statutory minimum qualifying period, but the rights in question – e.g payment of statutory notice pay – in practice involve a period of qualifying employment.
(k) In a case where Reg 38(2) applies (complaints by members of the armed forces), the time limit is extended from three months to six months (Reg 30(2)(a)).
(l) Where a tribunal jurisdiction is listed in Sch 4 to the Employment Act 2002, and S.32 of that Act applies, Reg 15 of the Employment Act 2002 (Dispute Resolution) Regulations 2004 SI 2004/752 operates to extend the normal time limit for bringing a claim for a period of three months beginning with the day after the day on which it would otherwise have happened. The extension applies in two scenarios: where the employee has reasonable grounds for believing that a dismissal or disciplinary procedure, statutory or otherwise, was being followed when the normal time limit expired; or where the employee has lodged a step 1 grievance letter within the normal time limit.
(m) The work and enforcement powers of the EOC and CRE transferred to the Equality and Human Rights Commission in October 2007.
* ET can extend time limit where they consider it was ‘not reasonably practicable’ to present the complaint in time.
****ET can extend time limit on ‘not reasonably practicable’ grounds, as above, or where delay was caused by reasonable attempts to pursue internal appeal, etc.
