Reply to resignation during lay-off or short time working

To claim a statutory redundancy payment (SRP) during lay-off or short time working, an employee must have two years’ continuous employment, have been laid off or on short time working for at least four consecutive weeks, or at least six weeks in any 13-week period, must serve written notice of their intention to claim which you don’t contest and then resign with due notice within specified time limits. Our response letter accepts the employee’s resignation and confirms whether there’s been compliance with the statutory provisions.

Claiming redundancy pay

An employee must follow a number of steps to claim an SRP during lay-off or short time working. In summary, they must:

• have two years’ continuous employment
• have spent the necessary length of time on lay-off or short time working i.e. at least four consecutive weeks, or a total of at least six weeks (no more than three being consecutive) in any 13-week period
• serve written notice of their intention to claim an SRP - this doesn’t need to be in a specific format as long as it indicates their intention to claim, but it must be given within four weeks of the last of the weeks of lay-off or short time working
• resign with notice, if you don’t serve a counter-notice that you wish to contest their claim on the basis that you have a reasonable expectation of a return to at least 13 weeks of normal working within four weeks of the date of service of the employee’s notice of intention to claim (see our Counter-notice to Notice of Intention to Claim a Redundancy Payment Letter).

For the purposes of this scheme, a week of lay-off occurs where no work is provided for the employee and they receive no pay (other than statutory guarantee pay) and a week of short time working takes place where the employee receives less than half a week’s pay for work done in that week.

Resignation requirements

To secure entitlement to an SRP, the employee’s resignation must be both with the correct amount of notice and submitted at the appropriate time. The amount of notice must be their contractual notice period or one week’s notice, whichever is greater. Assuming you’ve not served a counter-notice, their notice of resignation, which doesn’t need to be in writing, must be given within three weeks after the end of the seven-day period from service of their notice of intention to claim.

Our Reply to Resignation during Lay-Off or Short Time Working acknowledges the employee’s notice of intention to claim and resignation letter and accepts their resignation on the notice period given. There are then three alternative paragraphs:

1. The employee has complied with the statutory requirements and so is entitled to an SRP, in which case we’ve set out how to do the SRP calculation.
2. The employee has failed to either give the correct amount of notice of termination or served their resignation letter outside the permitted time limits and so is not entitled to an SRP.
3. The employee has less than two years’ continuous employment and so is not entitled to an SRP.

Our letter also assumes that the lay-off or short time working will continue during the employee’s notice period. You’ll need to amend this if either the employee is to return to work or is to be placed on garden leave during notice.