For decades, UK business owners lived by a ‘magic number’: three-months. It was the cornerstone of HR risk management. If a disgruntled ex-employee didn't file a claim within 90 days of leaving, you could usually breathe a sigh of relief and get back to business. However, the Employment Rights Act 2025 has fundamentally changed the landscape.

The New Limitation Period

From 1 January 2027, most employment tribunal claims, including Unfair Dismissal and Discrimination, will now have a six-month limitation period, effective for acts occurring on or after the implementation of the 2025 Act.

When you combine this with the Employment Tribunals (Early Conciliation: Exemptions and Rules of Procedure) (Amendment) Regulations 2025, which doubled the maximum ACAS Early Conciliation period from 6 weeks to 12 weeks, the timeline stretches even further.

The "Nine-Month" Danger Zone

Because the clock effectively stops during ACAS conciliation, an employer might not receive a formal ET1 claim form until nine or ten months after an employee has left. This creates two significant legal hurdles:

1. Fading Recollections – As seen in cases like Kimber v The Post Office, witness memory reliability is a frequent point of contention. By month nine, will your manager really remember the exact tone of that tense Friday afternoon meeting? A delay of nearly a year makes it incredibly difficult to provide credible oral evidence.

2. Document Preservation – Under the "Pre-Action Protocol" and general litigation duties, you must preserve evidence once a dispute is "reasonably foreseeable." If your IT policy auto-deletes emails after 6 months, you may find yourself attempting to defend a claim in month seven with your star evidence already sitting in the digital bin.

Your 2026 Compliance Checklist

To protect your business in this extended litigation window:

• Extend Data Retention – Update your internal policies. Ensure all disciplinary and grievance records are kept for at least 12 to 18 months post-employment to account for the new filing window.

• Detailed Notes – ‘He was rude’ will not cut it in court. You need contemporaneous notes: ‘On Tuesday at 10:00am, the employee used [specific language] in front of [witness].’ Managers should not rely on their memory but instead their detailed meeting notes.

• Proactive ACAS Engagement – With 12 weeks now available for conciliation, use this time to settle "nuisance" claims early before they become expensive, multi-year Tribunal battles.

If you would like to discuss an employment claim or any other employment matters, please contact Toby Walker by email or on 01494 521 301.