UK Statutory Redundancy Pay Calculator

Statutory redundancy pay is the legal minimum amount an employer in the United Kingdom must pay to an employee who has at least two years of continuous service and is genuinely being made redundant. For England, Scotland and Wales, this right comes from the Employment Rights Act 1996, Part XI (sections 135 to 161). Northern Ireland has its own, almost identical law, the Employment Rights (Northern Ireland) Order 1996, administered separately by the Department for the Economy rather than from Westminster. This calculator uses four pieces of information — your date of birth, your redundancy date, your complete years of continuous service, and your gross weekly pay before tax — to work out both figures at once: the statutory redundancy payment you are owed, and the statutory minimum notice period that goes with it.

The payment is not a flat number. Section 162 of the Employment Rights Act 1996 sets an age-banded formula that is applied separately to each complete year of service, counted backward from your last working day. Every complete year worked at age 41 or above earns 1.5 weeks' pay. Every complete year worked between 22 and 40 earns 1 week's pay. Every complete year worked under 22 earns 0.5 of a week's pay. If your 22nd or 41st birthday happens to fall inside one of these service years, that whole year is paid at the higher rate — a detail that is easy to miss if you try to work the sum out by hand. Only your most recent 20 years of service count, even if you have worked for the same employer for longer; this 20-year ceiling has been in the law since 1985 and has never changed, while the weekly pay figure below it is updated almost every year.

'A week's pay' is also capped by law, and this is where many people make a mistake when estimating by hand. The cap is reviewed every April through a statutory order, roughly in line with inflation. From 6 April 2026, under The Employment Rights (Increase of Limits) Order 2026, the cap for England, Scotland and Wales is £751, which puts the highest possible statutory payment at £22,530 (20 years × 1.5 × £751). Take Emma, a 45-year-old made redundant after 20 unbroken years with the same employer in Leeds, on a gross wage of £900 a week. Because £900 is above the £751 cap, the calculation uses £751, not her real wage. Four of her twenty years fall into the 41-and-over band and sixteen sit in the 22-to-40 band, so her total works out as (4 × 1.5 × £751) + (16 × 1 × £751) = £4,506 + £12,016 = £16,522 — under the legal ceiling, and lower than what her real weekly pay might suggest at first glance.

Northern Ireland sets its own weekly cap through a separate order from its own Department for the Economy, and it is usually a little higher than the Great Britain figure. From 6 April 2026, The Employment Rights (Increase of Limits) Order (Northern Ireland) 2026 puts the Northern Ireland cap at £783, giving a maximum payment of £23,490. The cap only changes anything once real pay is above it, though — most workers never get close. Take Aiden, 39, in Belfast, with eight years' service and a gross wage of £520 a week, which is below both caps. All eight of his years land in the 22-to-40 band, so his sum is simply 8 × 1 × £520 = £4,160. The higher Northern Ireland cap does not change his result, because his real pay was already below it.

Eligibility rules are strict. You need at least two full years of continuous service under section 155 of the Act — under that, statutory redundancy pay is nil, although a shorter statutory notice period under section 86 can still apply once you have worked one month or more. You also lose the right if you are dismissed for gross misconduct, or if you turn down, without good reason, a genuine offer of suitable alternative work from the same employer. On tax, the first £30,000 of a redundancy payment is free of income tax under section 403 of the Income Tax (Earnings and Pensions) Act 2003. In practice nearly everyone's statutory payment fits inside that limit on its own, since the legal ceiling itself sits below £30,000 in both nations — usually only a larger, contractual redundancy package on top of the statutory amount pushes a payment above that threshold.

It is worth remembering what this number is, and is not. It is the legal floor, not a typical outcome — plenty of employers pay more generous, contractual redundancy terms, and this calculator has no way of knowing what your own contract says, so use the result as a minimum to compare against what your employer actually offers, not as the final number. If your employer becomes insolvent and genuinely cannot pay, you are not left without recourse: you can claim the statutory amount directly from the government's Redundancy Payments Service, which draws on the National Insurance Fund. And although the age bands used here would normally look like age discrimination, they are written into the Equality Act 2010 (Schedule 9, Part 2) as a specifically permitted exception, so this calculation remains lawful even though it treats age groups differently.