Laid off or short-time: what are you owed?

The factory drops to three days. The hotel shuts for January. The site sends the scaffolders home in the rain. One question decides everything: does your contract actually allow unpaid lay-off? If it does not, you are owed full pay, not £41 a day.

Can they cut your hours without pay?

Start here, because everything else follows from it. Your employer can only lay you off without full pay, or cut you to short-time, if your contract permits it.

Permission can come from an express lay-off clause, a clear custom in your workplace, a national or industry agreement, a collective agreement with your union, or a new agreement you have accepted. Acas lists all five routes. If none of them applies, you are owed full pay.

That is not a technicality. If you are an employee and your boss sends you home with no contractual right to do so, the missing wages count as an unlawful deduction from wages under section 13 of the Employment Rights Act 1996. You can claim the shortfall in an employment tribunal. Workers, not only employees, can bring that claim.

There is no legal limit on how long a lay-off can last. The limit is your contract. Holiday keeps building up while you are laid off or on short-time. Your contract may allow you to do other work in the meantime. Check it, and agree it with your employer first.

Guarantee pay: the £41 a day safety net

If your contract does allow unpaid lay-off, statute gives employees a small floor. That is statutory guarantee pay, sections 28 to 35 of the Employment Rights Act 1996.

You get it for a workless day. That means a whole day, midnight to midnight, when you would normally be required to work but you get no work because demand has fallen or something else has hit the business. A factory slowdown counts. A hotel closed for January counts. Bad weather that stops the site counts. If you do any work at all that day, it is not workless and no guarantee pay is due for it.

You do not get guarantee pay if the workless day was caused by a strike, lock-out or other industrial action involving staff of your employer or an associated employer, if you unreasonably turned down suitable alternative work for that day, if you did not keep yourself available as reasonably required, or if you were on holiday or off sick. You must be available for work on the day.

A more generous contractual or collective scheme can top this up or replace it. What follows is the legal minimum.

Three winter cases, with the sums

Same law, very different pay packets. These are examples, with correct arithmetic at 2026 rates.

Claiming redundancy after lay-off or short-time

Long lay-off can turn into a right to redundancy pay. The route is sections 147 to 154 of the Employment Rights Act 1996. It is strict, and the deadlines bite.

First, the definitions. Laid off for a week means your contract requires the employer to provide work to earn pay and you got no pay that week. Short-time for a week means your pay for that week was less than half a week’s pay because work ran short. A three-day week on 60% pay is short-time in plain speech, but it is not short-time for this claim. The test is under half pay.

You qualify to start the process if, before you serve notice, you have been laid off or on short-time for either 4 or more weeks in a row, or 6 or more weeks in a 13-week period with no more than 3 in a row. Weeks of lay-off and short-time can mix. Weeks mainly caused by a strike or lock-out do not count. The last qualifying week must have ended on, or no more than 4 weeks before, the date you serve your notice.

You need 2 years continuous employment, the same as for ordinary statutory redundancy. Use our redundancy pay calculator to value the payment: half a week’s pay for each year under 22, one week’s pay for each year aged 22 to 40, one and a half for each year at 41 or over, capped at 20 years and at £751 a week in Great Britain from 6 April 2026.

1. Serve written notice of intention to claim. Write to your employer that you intend to claim a redundancy payment for lay-off or short-time, naming the qualifying weeks. Keep proof of sending. You must serve it within 4 weeks of the end of the qualifying run.
2. Wait 7 days for a counter-notice. The employer has 7 days to contest in writing. Silence means the claim is treated as accepted.
3. Answer a counter-notice. A counter-notice only works if, on the date of your notice, it was reasonable to expect at least 13 straight weeks of full work to start within the next 4 weeks. If you are laid off or short-timed again in each of those 4 weeks, the counter-notice fails. If it stands, only a tribunal can award payment.
4. Resign in time. You must give notice to end the contract: at least a week, or longer if your contract requires it. Do this within 3 weeks after the 7-day window closes if there was no counter-notice, within 3 weeks after the employer withdraws one, or within 3 weeks after the tribunal notifies its decision if you contested one. Miss that window and the right lapses.

Minimum wage, zero-hours staff and benefits

Short-time does not cut the hourly floor. From 1 April 2026 the rates are £12.71 for workers 21 and over, £10.85 for 18 to 20, and £8.00 for under 18s and apprentices. The test applies to hours actually worked in each pay period. A cut to three days must still average at least the right rate for those three days. Unworked lay-off days are not working time.

If the rota leaves you below the minimum for hours worked, report it to HMRC and read minimum wage rates and rights and paid below minimum wage. Enforcement now sits with the Fair Work Agency, set up on 7 April 2026: how to report an employer to the FWA.

Zero-hours and casual staff

Guarantee pay and the lay-off redundancy route are employee rights. Most zero-hours, casual and agency staff are workers, not employees, so the employer does not need lay-off machinery to withhold shifts. It simply offers none. That leaves workers with minimum wage for hours worked, holiday pay, and unlawful deduction protection if a promised minimum was not paid. Read zero-hours contracts and the 2027 outlook below.

True zero-hours employees are rare, but the gap is sharp even for them. With no day the contract requires them to work, there is often no workless day to trigger guarantee pay. Agency workers are usually employed by the agency, with no guaranteed assignments between bookings and no guarantee pay unless they are employees with set days.

Universal Credit while hours are cut

You may be able to claim Universal Credit or New Style Jobseeker’s Allowance while laid off or on short-time, depending on income and hours. Universal Credit adjusts to reduced earnings, with a 55p taper for each £1 above any work allowance and no minimum hours threshold. Seek advice before you resign to pursue lay-off redundancy, because leaving voluntarily can raise work-conditionality problems.

What to do this week

1. Pull your contract. Look for a lay-off or short-time clause, a collective agreement reference, or any written variation. Screenshot the rota, the lay-off message, and your last payslips. If you are in hospitality, manufacturing or construction, ask your rep: Unite and GMB cover many of these workplaces. Find the union for your job.
2. Work out what is owed. No clause means full pay. A valid clause means £41 a day for each fully workless day, up to 5 days in 3 months, after a month’s service. Hours you did work must meet the minimum wage.
3. Put it in writing. Email the manager: the days you were available, the work offered, the pay missing, and the date. Ask for correction in the next payroll. Keep it short and factual.
4. Get free help fast. Acas, Citizens Advice and law centres advise free. In Northern Ireland use Advice NI and the Labour Relations Agency. If cuts look selective or follow a complaint, say so, because that can support other claims.
5. Watch the clock. In Great Britain you now have 6 months from the workless day to complain to a tribunal about guarantee pay, and 6 months for unlawful deductions, after Acas early conciliation. In Northern Ireland the guarantee pay limit is still 3 months. The lay-off redundancy notice must go within 4 weeks of the qualifying run, and resignation within 3 weeks after that stage ends.

What has changed, and what is still promised

1. 1 Apr 2026Minimum wage rises

   £12.71 for 21 and over, £10.85 for 18 to 20, £8.00 for under 18 and apprentices.

2. 6 Apr 2026Guarantee and redundancy caps uprated; sick pay floor removed

   Guarantee pay £39 to £41 a day. A week’s pay for redundancy £719 to £751 in Great Britain, £749 to £783 in Northern Ireland. SSP waiting days and the earnings threshold gone, so Statutory Sick Pay now starts from the first day of sickness for those who qualify.

3. 7 Apr 2026Fair Work Agency established

   Single enforcement body for minimum wage and other core rights. First naming round in September 2026.

4. 1 Oct 2026Tribunal time limits double in Great Britain

   Guarantee pay and unlawful deduction claims move from 3 to 6 months. Old guides saying 3 months are now wrong for England, Wales and Scotland. Northern Ireland stays at 3 months.

5. 1 Jan 2027Unfair dismissal protection starts earlier

   Qualifying period falls to 6 months for dismissals from this date. Relevant if you are sacked for refusing a forced move to unpaid lay-off terms.

6. 2027Guaranteed hours reform scheduled

   Right to guaranteed hours for zero and low-hours workers, plus reasonable notice of shifts and pay for short-notice cancellation. Promised, consulted on, not yet law. Law-change alerts tracks it.