What redundancy pay and notice pay are
Being made redundant usually produces two separate payments, worked out on different rules. Statutory redundancy pay compensates you for the years you worked for the employer. Notice pay covers the notice period you were owed before the job ended — money you would have earned had you stayed until its end. This calculator works out both and adds them into one total before tax, so you can see what reaches your bank account and which part is taxable.
- Statutory redundancy pay: half a week's pay for each full year you were under 22, a week's pay for each year from 22 to 40, and a week and a half for each year from 41. Service beyond 20 years does not count.
- Weekly pay for redundancy pay is your gross average over the 12 weeks before notice began. From 6 April 2026 a week counts for no more than £751, and the most anyone can receive is £22,530.
- Notice pay: the statutory minimum runs from one month of service (1 week) up to 12 weeks after 12 years, and your contract can only improve on it. It is paid on your average weekly pay, not the capped figure.
Statutory redundancy pay needs two years of continuous employment, and it is for employees: agency workers, casual workers and people on zero-hours contracts are usually not employees, and the armed forces, police, crown servants and domestic servants in a private household are outside the scheme. You normally have six months from the day your job ended to make a claim.
General information for England, Wales and Scotland, not legal advice. Your actual entitlement depends on your contract, your pay history and why the job ended.
How the calculator works
It needs your date of birth (the age bands turn on it), the first and last day of your employment, your gross weekly pay, and whether you worked your notice or were paid in lieu of it. If your contract promised more notice than the statutory minimum, enter those weeks too: the longer of the two governs.
Age and service are measured on the relevant date. Usually that is the day the notice period ends. When you are paid in lieu of notice, Acas explains that the date your employment would have ended had you worked your statutory notice is used instead, so those statutory weeks are added to your service. Someone with 8 years 11 months of service and 8 weeks of statutory notice paid in lieu is treated as having 9 years 1 month on that date.
From the relevant date the calculator walks backwards one full year at a time, paying each year at the age you were when that year of service began, and stops after the 20 most recent years. Those multipliers give a number of weeks, which is then multiplied by your weekly pay — up to the £751 weekly cap for the redundancy element only. Notice pay is a separate multiplication of the weeks you are owed by your uncapped weekly pay.
If you have worked under two years you get no statutory redundancy pay, but notice pay is still owed and still shown.
Worked examples
Pay in lieu of notice. Date of birth 15 January 1990, employed from 1 July 2017 to 30 June 2026, gross weekly pay £400, and the employer pays notice in lieu. At 8 years 11 months the statutory notice is 8 weeks, so the relevant date becomes 25 August 2026 and service reads as 9 years 1 month. Every one of those 9 years falls in the 22 to 40 band: 9 weeks × £400 = £3,600. Notice pay is 8 × £400 = £3,200. Total before tax: £6,800.
The age bands doing the work. Acas's example of a 45-year-old with 22 years of service and £300 a week: the four most recent years are paid at a week and a half each (6 weeks), the next sixteen at a week each (16 weeks), and the two oldest years fall outside the 20-year limit. 22 weeks × £300 = £6,600.
The weekly cap. At £1,000 a week the redundancy element is still multiplied by £751, so 30 weeks of pay for a worker aged 41 or over over a full career gives the £22,530 ceiling. Notice pay on the same salary is 12 × £1,000 = £12,000, because the cap does not apply to it.
Click Try the Acas example above to load the first one into the calculator.
Tax and National Insurance
Statutory redundancy pay up to £30,000 is not taxable, so the whole redundancy figure here falls below that threshold and reaches you intact. Notice pay is different: money paid instead of working your notice counts as pay you would have earned, so income tax and National Insurance apply to it. If you work your notice instead, it arrives as ordinary wages through PAYE.
The £30,000 exemption applies to the combined total of qualifying termination payments, and amounts above it are taxable. Your employer handles the tax through a leaver form (P45) and the PAYE code on your final pay, so what you actually receive depends on your tax code and your pay across the year.