Redundancy is bad enough when there is a company left to pay you. When the company has gone into administration or liquidation, people assume the money has gone with it. It has not. The state pays statutory entitlements out of the National Insurance Fund when an employer cannot, and you claim directly rather than joining a queue of creditors.
This explains what is covered, what the limits are, and how the claim works in practice. It is general information about the process rather than advice on your particular situation.
What counts as insolvent
The scheme applies where the employer is formally insolvent: liquidation, administration, receivership, a company voluntary arrangement, or bankruptcy for a sole trader. A company that has simply run out of money and stopped paying people is not, in this technical sense, insolvent, and that is an important distinction.
If your employer is failing to pay but has not entered a formal insolvency process, this route is not open to you and the answer is an employment tribunal claim instead. If you are not sure which situation you are in, ask whoever has been appointed, or check Companies House, which shows the appointment of an administrator or liquidator.
What you can claim
Four things, each with its own limit.
| What you are owed | What the fund pays |
|---|---|
| Statutory redundancy pay | The full statutory calculation, capped at £751 a week |
| Arrears of pay | Up to 8 weeks |
| Holiday pay | Up to 6 weeks |
| Statutory notice pay | Your statutory notice entitlement, claimed separately |
The £751 weekly cap applies across all of them for dismissals on or after 6 April 2026. If you earned £1,200 a week, every element is calculated as though you earned £751. Before 6 April 2026 the cap was £719.
These are statutory entitlements only. If your contract promised an enhanced redundancy package, the fund pays the statutory element and the enhancement becomes a claim in the insolvency, which usually means little or nothing.
The two caps stack. Eight weeks of arrears at £751 is £6,008, however much you were actually owed. Someone owed three months of unpaid salary on a good wage will recover a fraction of it. That is the design of the scheme rather than an error, and it is worth understanding before you count on a figure.
How the claim works
You do not deal with your old employer, because there is effectively no employer left to deal with.
An insolvency practitioner, or the Official Receiver, is appointed to handle the company. They provide you with a case reference number, beginning CN, and you use that to make an online claim to the Redundancy Payments Service on GOV.UK. If nobody has sent you a reference number, chase the insolvency practitioner, because you cannot start without it.
The claim covers redundancy pay, arrears of pay and holiday pay together. You will need your National Insurance number, your bank details, your employment dates, your pay details and your dismissal date.
Notice Pay is a separate claim, made later
This trips almost everyone up, so it is worth being clear about.
Statutory notice pay is claimed separately from the rest, on a different form, using a different reference beginning LN. And you cannot claim it straight away. You have to wait until the date your notice period would have ended, because the amount depends on what happened during it.
It is compensation for loss of notice rather than wages, and the Redundancy Payments Service is required to deduct the value of any income-related benefits you were entitled to claim during the notice period. So if you claimed, or could have claimed, Universal Credit or Jobseeker's Allowance while you would have been working out your notice, that reduces the payment.
The practical consequence is that people forget to make the second claim. Put the date your notice period ends in your calendar as soon as you are dismissed, with a reminder to submit the loss of notice claim then.
The six month deadline
You must apply for redundancy pay within six months of being dismissed. That is the headline deadline and it is the one to work to.
Do not let the insolvency process set your pace. Administrations run for months, and waiting for someone to tell you what to do is how the six months disappears. If you have a CN reference, claim.
There is a separate deadline if you end up disputing your entitlement at an employment tribunal, which for a statutory redundancy payment is usually six months from the date of dismissal rather than the three months that applied to most other claims before 1 October 2026. The two are easy to conflate and they are different things, so if a dispute is developing, take advice on which limit applies to you.
Tax and Timescales
Statutory redundancy pay is tax free. Arrears of pay and holiday pay are earnings, so income tax and National Insurance are deducted before you receive them.
Payments are usually made within a few weeks of a complete claim, though a complicated insolvency or an incomplete claim takes longer. The most common cause of delay is a mismatch between what you have claimed and what the insolvency practitioner's records show, which is why keeping your own paperwork matters.
What to gather now
Do this before the records become hard to reach, because a collapsed company's HR system does not stay accessible.
- Your contract of employment, or a written statement of terms
- Payslips, particularly the last twelve weeks before notice, which is the period a week's pay is averaged over
- Your P45 if you have been given one, and your P60s
- Any letter about redundancy, dismissal or the insolvency
- A record of holiday taken and holiday accrued in the current leave year
- Your start date, or evidence of it
- The name of the insolvency practitioner and the CN reference
Work out what you think you are owed as well, using our guide to the statutory calculation or the calculator. Going into the process with your own figure means you notice if the payment does not match.
If you are kept on by an administrator
Administrators sometimes keep trading and keep staff on while they look for a buyer. If that happens, you are still employed and there is nothing to claim yet.
If the business is sold as a going concern, TUPE may transfer you to the buyer with your continuous service intact, in which case there is no redundancy at all. If it is not sold, redundancies follow and you claim then. The important point is that your service history carries through a TUPE transfer, so do not let a new employer treat you as a day one starter.
Where to get help
The Redundancy Payments Service has its own helpline and deals with these claims all day. The insolvency practitioner is obliged to give you information about your position. Acas provides free, impartial advice on 0300 123 1100. Citizens Advice can help with the claim itself and with the benefits side, which usually matters at the same time.
One last thing worth doing early: make a benefits claim rather than waiting for the redundancy payment. Universal Credit takes time to come through, the notice pay element of your claim is affected by what you were entitled to anyway, and money that arrives in eight weeks does not pay this month's rent.