Employment Tribunal Compensation

An ordinary unfair dismissal award has two separate parts, and this calculator estimates each in turn.

The basic award (Employment Rights Act 1996 s.119) uses the statutory redundancy formula: for each complete year of service, 1.5 weeks' pay where you were 41 or over for the whole of that year, 1 week aged 22 to 40, and half a week under 22. Service is reckoned backwards from the dismissal, capped at 20 years, and a week's pay is capped at £751.00 — so the basic award can never exceed £22,530.00 (30 weeks at the capped rate).

The compensatory award (s.123) covers actual financial loss — mainly lost earnings and lost pension and statutory rights. Here it is estimated as the weeks out of work multiplied by your gross weekly pay, then limited by the s.124(1ZA) cap: the lower of £123,543.00 and 52 weeks' pay. For most claimants the 52-week limb binds first, which is why the statutory maximum is rarely the operative figure.

What this deliberately does not model. Discrimination awards under the Equality Act 2010 are uncapped and carry an additional injury-to-feelings award on the Vento bands, so a dismissal that is also discriminatory can be worth far more than this figure. The tool also omits the ACAS Code uplift of up to 25% where an employer unreasonably failed to follow the Code (and the equivalent reduction against a claimant), Polkey reductions where the tribunal finds you might have been dismissed anyway had a fair procedure been followed, contributory-fault reductions under s.123(6), and the duty to mitigate by seeking new work — tribunals cut awards for earnings you did or should have obtained. Nor does it deduct tax, apply the recoupment rules for benefits received, or add notice pay, holiday pay or the separate awards for failure to provide written particulars.