Dismissal: UK employment law

Essential points

• A dismissal is when the employer ends a contract of employment. Dismissals can be both fair and unfair. Employers have legal obligations to fulfil if they wish to conclude a fair dismissal.
• Employees who are unfairly dismissed may bring a claim in an employment tribunal. Such claims can be settled by the employer via a settlement agreement, by a conciliation process.
• To challenge an unfair dismissal, the employee generally must have worked for the employer for 2 years (on or after 6 April 2012). This is known as the qualifying period. 
• Some settlement agreements involve contentious issues such as non-disclosure agreements (NDAs).
• There are five potentially fair reasons for dismissal. These are capability, conduct, redundancy, statutory illegality or ‘some other substantial reason' (SOSR).
• Even where an employer can show one of the five reasons, for a dismissal to be fair they must also follow a fair procedure.
• The different types of unfair dismissal claim are:
  • Ordinary unfair dismissal.
  • Automatic unfair dismissal.
  • Constructive dismissal. 

Under the Employment Rights Bill it is proposed that the two-year unfair dismissal qualifying period will be replaced with a new statutory probationary period arrangement. Keep up to date with the latest on these changes with our tracker of potential law changes. This page outlines the current legislation. We will update this page once any changes are enforced.