Count years backwards, not forwards
GOV.UK tells you to start from your age at the relevant date and walk backwards through complete years of service. A year in which you were 41 or older is worth one and a half weeks' pay. A year in which you were 22 or older, but under 41, is worth one week's pay. A year in which you were under 22 is worth half a week's pay. The age that matters is your age during that year of service, not your age on the day you leave applied to every year. Someone who is 42 with 10 years' service does not get one and a half weeks for all 10 years. Only the years from 41 onwards take the higher multiplier. The earlier years in that decade take one week.
Only complete years count, and only 20 of them. A job of 24 years still stops at 20, and the 20 that count are the most recent 20, because the count runs backwards. A job of one year and eleven months is one complete year if a full year was finished, and it is nothing for statutory redundancy if two complete years were not. The minimum is two complete years. Under that line the statutory payment is zero even when the age bands would have produced a figure.
The weekly cap and the £22,530 maximum
From 6 April 2026 the weekly pay used in the sum is capped at £751. If your week's pay is £900, the calculation uses £751. If it is £500, it uses £500. The cap is not a tax and it is not a deduction from wages you are still owed. It is the maximum week's pay the statutory formula will recognise. A week's pay itself has rules for people whose hours vary. The calculator asks for the week's pay you have already worked out, and then applies the cap.
The maximum statutory award is 20 years at the one-and-a-half band, which is 30 weeks, times £751. That is £22,530. You only reach it if you have 20 complete years all counted at age 41 or over, and your week's pay is at least the cap. A shorter history, or years under 41, produces less even when pay is high. The calculator's ceiling is that £22,530 figure. It will not print a larger statutory total because a contract promised one.
A short worked count
Take someone aged 45 at the relevant date, with 10 complete years, and a week's pay of £800. The cap cuts the week to £751. Walking backwards, the years at 44, 43, 42 and 41 are four years at one and a half weeks. The years at 40 down to 35 are six years at one week. The total is 4 times 1.5 plus 6, which is 12 weeks. Twelve times £751 is £9,012. If the week's pay had been £600, the same 12 weeks would be £7,200, because the cap would not bite. If the service had been 18 months, the statutory payment would be zero because two complete years are missing.
The relevant date is usually the day employment ends, and it can be earlier in some dismissal cases. This guide uses the age and the years you type into the calculator as the age at that date and the complete years before it. It does not rebuild a start date from a calendar. If the dates are wrong, the age bands will be wrong with them. Acas publishes the same multipliers and the same instruction to count backwards. The weekly cap and the maximum on this page are the GOV.UK figures for a relevant date on or after 6 April 2026.
What statutory redundancy is not
A contract, a settlement, or a collective agreement can pay more. The statutory sum is a minimum for employees who qualify, not a cap on what an employer may pay. Notice pay, holiday pay, and wages already earned are different debts. The holiday calculator on this site is the pro-rata leave sum, not a redundancy week. Statutory sick pay and statutory maternity pay are different again. None of them is added to the redundancy total on this page.
Tax treatment of a redundancy payment is a separate question and is not calculated here. The figure is the statutory weeks times the capped week's pay. It is not a take-home amount. Directors, people who have not been employees, and people who unreasonably refuse suitable alternative work can fall outside the statutory scheme. The calculator assumes the person qualifies and that the years and the week's pay are the ones the formula should see. If either assumption is wrong, the arithmetic can still be tidy and the entitlement can still be zero.
The age used for each year is the age at the start of that year of service, walking backwards from the age at the relevant date. That is why a person aged 45 with 10 complete years has four years at one and a half weeks, the years that started at 44, 43, 42 and 41, and six years at one week. It is also why the Acas-style case of a 45-year-old with a long history, capped at 20 years, produces six weeks from the 41-and-over band rather than one and a half weeks for every year. A person aged 42 with two complete years has one year at one and a half weeks and one year at one week. Half-weeks appear when the year started under 22. The calculator's tests lock those counts, and the guide uses the same walk. From 6 April 2026 the week inside them cannot exceed £751, so the highest statutory result remains 30 of those weeks, £22,530. A relevant date before 6 April 2026 used an earlier cap. Do not type this £751 figure into a redundancy that ended in the previous tax year.