The tribunal window doubles on 1 October, and the date that decides it is not the date the claim arrives

From 1 October 2026 that reflex stops being safe. The window for almost every complaint a former member of staff can take to an employment tribunal doubles from three months to six. More claims arriving is not the main risk. The risk is that a claim can arrive about a payday, a shift or a dismissal two seasons old, when the manager who could explain it has gone and the record that would have settled it was never kept in a form anyone can produce. Nor does the new window turn on the filing date. It turns on a date the law sets separately for each kind of complaint.

The change arrives through the Employment Rights Act 2025 (Commencement No. 5 and Transitional Provisions) (Amendment) Regulations 2026, S.I. 2026/954 (C. 79), which was made on 1 September 2026. Regulation 3 is the whole commencement:

Section 152 states the scale:

Nineteen paragraphs do that work, and almost every one substitutes "six" for "three": paragraph 4 in sections 23 and 111 of the Employment Rights Act 1996, paragraph 6 in regulation 30 of the Working Time Regulations 1998, paragraph 13 in regulations 12 and 15 of the TUPE Regulations 2006.

None of it has happened yet. Each paragraph carries the same note. Against paragraph 18 it reads "Sch. 12 para. 18 not in force at Royal Assent, see s. 159(3)", and it sits under the status line "This version of this schedule contains provisions that are prospective." In the text legislation.gov.uk calls "up to date with all changes known to be in force on or before 09 September 2026", section 111(2)(a) still reads:

Acas, on a page last updated 4 September 2026, states both the change and its limit:

The "minus 1 day" is not a rounding: both periods run "before the end of the period of" three or six months "beginning with" the relevant date. Acas puts today's window at "3 months minus 1 day – for most claims".

The transitional rule is regulation 4(1):

So the six months is not a switch that flips on 1 October for everything outstanding. It is a test applied grievance by grievance, and what it tests is the relevant date. Regulation 4(2) defines that date three ways: by the second column of table 1 or table 2, for the complaints those tables name; by the date the employment ceased, for a section 11(1) reference about written particulars or an itemised pay statement; and otherwise by the residual limb:

The first six rows below come from the second column of table 1 or table 2; the last two are in neither table, and take their dates from regulation 4(2)(b) and 4(2)(c) instead.

The wages entry governs the £40 plate rack, and does two jobs at once:

Unfair dismissal is easier. Column 2 answers "The effective date of termination (see section 97 of the 1996 Act)", which is the day employment ended, not the day of the argument behind it.

Table 2 has three TUPE entries, not two: 12(1) and 15(1) attach to the transfer, while 15(10), on failure to pay compensation a tribunal ordered, dates from "The date of the tribunal's order." Paragraph 13, which makes those amendments, is marked E+W+S at source and does not extend to Northern Ireland. What transfers with the staff when a restaurant is sold is a subject of its own.

The rule that a repeated practice is dated to its last instance is not in the transitional Schedule; regulation 4(2) only decides which regime a grievance falls into. For a wages complaint the rule sits in section 23(3) of the Employment Rights Act 1996, a subsection Schedule 12 leaves alone:

A £5 till-shortage deduction taken every fortnight is therefore not a set of separately expiring grievances. It is one series dated to its last deduction, and both table 1 and regulation 4(2)(c)(ii) carry that shape into the transitional test, so a practice still running in October takes the new regime with it.

Nothing here creates a duty to keep anything, and the shift and hours records a restaurant already has to keep is its own article. What regulation 4 changes is the horizon those records must reach.

Schedule 12 paragraph 18 is short enough to quote whole:

Section 123(1)(a) today reads "the period of 3 months starting with the date of the act to which the complaint relates, or". The discretion in subsection (1)(b) to allow "such other period as the employment tribunal thinks just and equitable" is untouched; it sits outside the substitution and always did.

That limb is not a peculiarity of discrimination. Three things move a date the tables appear to fix, and all three reach the old three-month window as much as the new one.

The first is early conciliation. Acas: "When you notify Acas, your time limit will be paused until early conciliation ends. This only applies if you notify Acas within your employment tribunal time limit." Section 207B of the Employment Rights Act 1996 is the machinery, and section 111(2A) applies it to unfair dismissal.

The second sits immediately beneath the subsection quoted earlier. Section 111(2) does not stop at limb (a):

Section 23(4) says the same for the wages complaint carrying the £40 plate rack.

The third is the judge. Acas again: "If your time limit has passed, you can still make a claim to an employment tribunal. It's up to the judge to decide whether they will accept your claim. However, in most cases time limits are strictly enforced."

None of that makes the relevant date unimportant; it decides which primary period applies. But the primary period is not an expiry date.

Two identical deductions, a day apart, will spend the winter under different rules. A £40 deduction on a payday of 30 September 2026 has a relevant date before 1 October, so regulation 4(1) keeps it outside the amendments; it does not lengthen because the claim is filed in November. The same deduction on a 1 October payday gets the six-month section 23.

The overlap that creates is an autumn, not a year. The latest grievance on the old rule is dated 30 September 2026, and its primary window, three months minus a day, runs out around 29 December 2026. The earliest six-month windows, dated 1 October, do not fall due until the end of March 2027. So the two regimes run side by side through this autumn; from the turn of the year only one primary period is still live, and an older grievance reaches the new year through conciliation or a tribunal's extension, not through the transitional rule.

The same manager is working out what a shift now costs: sick pay from the first qualifying day on a variable-hours rota.

Three honest gaps. First, Acas guidance on the change exists and is quoted above, but no tribunal decision or judicial guidance on the regulation 4 transitional rule was located in this research; the instrument is eight days old. Second, how the section 207B extension stacks arithmetically on six months rather than three was not worked through against the amended text. Check it with an adviser before treating any date as final. Third, section 152 says the increase reaches industrial tribunals in Northern Ireland "in certain cases", and no paragraph-by-paragraph extent audit was done here. Two are established: paragraph 13 is marked E+W+S, and paragraph 9 takes the Great Britain limit for European Works Council time off to six months while inserting a new regulation 27AA giving Northern Ireland its own route, on a fresh three-month limit running from "the day on which the time off was taken or on which it is alleged the time off should have been permitted".

One date is separate, published by the government rather than the instrument. On the Department for Business and Trade timeline, "the time limit for bringing a claim to the Employment Tribunal will increase from 3 to 6 months – for breach of employment contract claims in Scotland this change will take place on 9 November 2026". No Schedule 12 paragraph amends a breach-of-contract limit; the nineteen headings name other enactments. That is why the bullet has its own date.

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For every open argument with a current or former member of staff, write down the single date the Schedule attaches to it: the payday, the effective date of termination, the day the leave should have been permitted, the date of the transfer. That date, not the date anything is filed, decides which primary window the grievance falls into: three months minus a day, or six. It is the start of the answer, not the whole of it. Notifying Acas pauses the clock, a tribunal may take a late claim where presenting one in time was not reasonably practicable, and the judge decides. That is the argument for keeping the record until the question is closed, not until a date on a calendar.