Draft regulations have been put before Parliament to bring into law provisions of the Employment Rights Act 2025 that extend the time limits for certain employment tribunal claims. If accepted, they will come into force and apply to claims from 1 October 2026.
The Employment Tribunals Extension of Jurisdiction (England and Wales) (Amendment) Order 2026 extends the time limit for presenting claims in respect of employees’ contract of employment claims from three to six months. It amends the Employment Tribunals Extension of Jurisdiction (England and Wales) Order 1994 and only applies in England and Wales. Equivalent regulations for Scotland are not yet available.
Contract of employment claims include breach of contract and wrongful dismissal claims. Under transitional provisions, the regulations will only apply where the effective date of termination occurs on or after 1 October 2026, or, where there is no effective date of termination, the last day upon which the employee worked in employment that terminated on or after 1 October 2026.
The “effective date of termination” is defined in the regulations as:
where notice is given on termination, whether given by the employer or the employee, it is the date on which the notice expires
where no notice is given on termination, it is the date on which the termination takes effect
where the contract is for a limited-term and it is not renewed, it is the date on which the termination takes effect.
The Employment Tribunal (Extension of Time Limits) (Miscellaneous Amendments and Transitional Provisions) Regulations 2026 apply to England, Scotland and Wales. These regulations amend seven statutory instruments to extend time limits for presenting complaints to an employment tribunal for specified matters from three months to six months.
These regulations cover claims surrounding rights for fixed-term workers, part-time workers, collective consultation, zero-hours exclusivity clauses, blacklisting and NHS recruitment whistleblowing.
Transitional provisions make it so that these will apply only where the act, or failure to act, to which the complaint relates occurs on or after 1 October 2026. Where the complaint relates to a series of acts, or failures to act, then the extended time limits will only apply where the last of those acts or failures occurs on or after 1 October 2026. Similarly, where the detriment or less favourable treatment complained of is a series of similar acts or failures, the amendments made by these regulations will only apply to cases where the date of the last act or failure is on or after 1 October 2026.
