Employment Protection (Consolidation) Act 1978

85 Employee anticipating expiry of employer’s notice. E+W+S

(1) The provisions of this section shall have effect where—

(a) an employer gives notice to an employee to terminate his contract of employment, and

(b) at a time within the obligatory period of that notice, the employee gives notice in writing to the employer to terminate the contract of employment on a date earlier than the date on which the employer’s notice is due to expire.

(2) Subject to the following provisions of this section, in the circumstances specified in subsection (1) the employee shall, for the purposes of this Part, be taken to be dismissed by his employer.

(3) If, before the employee’s notice is due to expire, the employer gives him notice in writing—

(a) requiring him to withdraw his notice terminating the contract of employment as mentioned in subsection (1)(b) and to continue in the employment until the date on which the employer’s notice expires, and

(b) stating that, unless he does so, the employer will contest any liability to pay to him a redundancy payment in respect of the termination of his contract of employment,

but the employee does not comply with the requirements of that notice, the employee shall not be entitled to a redundancy payment by virtue of subsection (2) except as provided by subsection (4).

(4) Where, in the circumstances specified in subsection (1), the employer has given notice to the employee under subsection (3), and on a reference to a tribunal it appears to the tribunal, having regard both to the reasons for which the employee seeks to leave the employment and those for which the employer requires him to continue in it, to be just and equitable that the employee should receive the whole or part of any redundancy payment to which he would have been entitled apart from subsection (3), the tribunal may determine that the employer shall be liable to pay to the employee—

(a) the whole of the redundancy payment to which the employee would have been so entitled, or

(b) such part of that redundancy payment as the tribunal thinks fit.

(5) In this section—

(a) if the actual period of the employer’s notice (that is to say, the period beginning at the time when the notice is given and ending at the time when it expires) is equal to the minimum period which (whether by virtue of any enactment or otherwise) is required to be given by the employer to terminate the contract of employment, “the obligatory period", in relation to that notice, means the actual period of the notice;

(b) in any other case, “the obligatory period", in relation to an employer’s notice, means that period which, being equal to the minimum period referred to in paragraph (a), expires at the time when the employer’s notice expires.