Continuity of Employment

The concept of continuous employment has been in existence since 1963 when the Contracts of Employment Act 1963 first conferred on employees the right to minimum periods of notice on the termination of their contracts of employment and made the length of notice dependent upon the period of continuous service. The basic rules for calculating continuous employment have varied little since then, and those same rules have been applied to the regime of statutory employment rights introduced by successive Acts of Parliament.

The Handbook is arranged as follows:

• Chapter 1 explains the general principles for computing a period of continuous employment and deals with how those rules are applied in the ordinary case where an employee is employed for an unbroken period under a contract of employment
• Chapter 2 deals with the situations where, in respect of a break in employment during which no contract exists, the statutory rules provide not only for continuity to be preserved but for the length of the break to count towards the period of continuous employment
• Chapter 3 deals with those rare situations where a break in employment, although not breaking continuity as such, will not count as a period of continuous service. Also included in this chapter is a discussion of the rules relating to the effect on continuity where employees receive statutory redundancy payments.

The last two chapters deal with continuity following a change of employer: Chapter 4 focuses on the situation where such a change comes about as a result of the transfer of a business or undertaking; and Chapter 5 covers other circumstances where continuity will be preserved when an employee becomes employed by another employer.

This Handbook was published in April 2001.