UK employment tribunal time limits double to six months from 1 October 2026

Confirmation landed this week that the extension of employment tribunal claim time limits from three months to six months takes effect on 1 October 2026 under the Employment Rights Act 2025. The change applies across claim types; breach of contract claims in Scotland follow on 9 November 2026. Practitioners read the provision as applying where the act complained of falls on or after 1 October, so anything earlier keeps the three-month limit.

Why this matters. Three months is short, and it runs from the act complained of rather than from the point you realise something was wrong. Remote workers are disadvantaged by that in a specific way: patterns that only become visible over time — being passed over, excluded from decisions, having flexibility withdrawn incrementally — often take longer than three months to recognise as a pattern at all. Six months makes those claims practically possible rather than theoretically available.

The same Act makes refusal of a flexible working request subject to a reasonableness test, with the employer required to state and explain the ground for refusal. The eight statutory business grounds are unchanged, as is the eight weeks’ pay penalty. Consultation on the revised Acas Code of Practice is expected in autumn 2026, with the substantive flexible working changes taking effect in 2027.

What to watch. The Acas consultation this autumn. The Code will decide what “reasonable” means in practice, and that matters more day to day than the statutory wording.