Letting a worker go: the minimum notice a trades firm must give, 1 week per year up to 12 weeks, worked at £560 a week

The work on the Hendon job has finished and the next one is not signed. You have a labourer who has been with you for five years. How much notice does the law say you have to give him, and what does it cost?

What GOV.UK says

The GOV.UK page on notice periods in a redundancy gives the minimum an employer must give:

The page adds that an employer may give more than the statutory minimum but cannot give less. If his contract says 4 weeks, 4 weeks is what you owe, even if the table says 1.

What the notice weeks cost

Take a labourer on £14 an hour for 40 hours, so £560 a week (14 x 40 = 560). The notice weeks are wages you pay whether or not there is work for him.

Check: 2 x 560 is 1,120; 5 x 560 is 2,800; 7 x 560 is 3,920; 12 x 560 is 6,720. The 15-year worker gets the same 12 weeks as the 12-year one, because the table stops there.

So the five-year labourer in the opening needs 5 weeks' notice at least, which is £2,800 of wages. Putting that in the job price, or the cash plan, before you take the next contract is cheaper than finding it afterwards.

Why the table matters for a small firm

Notice grows with service, so your longest-serving people are the most expensive to let go in the short run. A firm with three labourers at 1, 5 and 12 years would owe 1, 5 and 12 weeks, which is 18 weeks in all (1 + 5 + 12 = 18) and £10,080 in wages at £560 a week (18 x 560 = 10,080). That is a ceiling for the three together, and it only matters if all three are let go at once.

What to put in place

• Read the contract first. The statutory figure is a floor. A longer contractual notice wins.
• Write down the start date of every worker, so the length of service is a date you can count, not a memory.
• Diarise the notice end date the day notice is given.
• Count the other costs of staff in the same sitting: holiday for a first employee, sick pay from day one and employer National Insurance on a first hire.

What I did not read

The page I read covers notice in a redundancy. I did not read whether part years count towards the "each year", whether the same minimum applies to a dismissal for conduct or capability, how pay in lieu of notice works, how long someone must work before they can claim unfair dismissal, or what redundancy pay is owed. I did not read the legislation itself, or the notice an employee must give, which the page leaves to the contract. Ask your adviser before you act on a real dismissal.

Overlyft builds AI staff who join your trades team and keep each worker's start date and contract notice term, work out the notice weeks and their wage cost whenever a job ends, and put the figure in front of the office manager, who decides what to do.

This is general information, not tax or legal advice. Check the GOV.UK page and your adviser for your own firm.