Rights to pay during notice

The EAT has issued a surprising ruling which means that some employees will lose their right to pay during notice.

The law says that everyone has the right to at least the statutory notice, which is a week for every year of service to a maximum of 12 weeks. An employee dismissed with statutory notice has the right to be paid during the notice period, even if otherwise the employee would not have been in receipt of pay, for example, due to having been off on long-term sick where sickness pay was exhausted.

Some workers will have a contractual entitlement to longer notice. The EAT has said that the effect of this longer notice is to deprive employees of the rights they have to statutory notice, including the right to be paid during the period of the notice. This meant that an employee, who had the contractual right to three months' notice (therefore more than 12 weeks) but no specific right to be paid during the notice period, lost out on any right to payment.

* The Scotts Company v Budd EAT/823/01