Employment Rights Act 1996

119 Basic award

(1) Subject to the provisions of this section, sections 120 to 122 and section 126, the amount of the basic award shall be calculated by—

(a) determining the period, ending with the effective date of termination, during which the employee has been continuously employed,

(b) reckoning backwards from the end of that period the number of years of employment falling within that period, and

(c) allowing the appropriate amount for each of those years of employment.

(2) In subsection (1)(c) “the appropriate amount” means—

(a) one and a half weeks' pay for a year of employment in which the employee was not below the age of forty-one,

(b) one week’s pay for a year of employment (not within paragraph (a)) in which he was not below the age of twenty-two, and

(c) half a week’s pay for a year of employment not within paragraph (a) or (b).

(3) Where twenty years of employment have been reckoned under subsection (1), no account shall be taken under that subsection of any year of employment earlier than those twenty years.

(4) Where the effective date of termination is after the sixty-fourth anniversary of the day of the employee’s birth, the amount arrived at under subsections (1) to (3) shall be reduced by the appropriate fraction.

(5) In subsection (4) “the appropriate fraction” means the fraction of which—

(a) the numerator is the number of whole months reckoned from the sixty-fourth anniversary of the day of the employee’s birth in the period beginning with that anniversary and ending with the effective date of termination, and

(b) the denominator is twelve.

(6) Subsections (4) and (5) do not apply to a case within section 96(1).