Employee rights when an employer becomes insolvent: the timeline
A complete redundancy payment claim is typically paid within 6 weeks, but the claim itself must normally be made within 6 months of the redundancy or dismissal date (gov.uk). The claim goes to the government-backed Redundancy Payments Service, not the company, so it does not wait on what the insolvency recovers, but it does have its own deadline. Insolvency Service, gov.uk
Data as of: the claim process as published on gov.uk, checked 22 September 2026
| Stage | Typical timing | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Employer becomes insolvent | Day 0 | An insolvency practitioner is appointed and takes over the company. Some employees may be kept on, others made redundant |
| Case reference issued | Soon after appointment | The insolvency practitioner gives affected employees a case reference number (starts "CN"), needed before an online claim can start |
| Claim submitted | As soon as practicable | Apply online via gov.uk: form RP1 for redundancy pay, holiday pay and arrears of pay, form RP2 for statutory notice pay |
| Claim deadline | Normally within 6 months of the redundancy or dismissal date | Miss this window and the right to claim is normally lost |
| Payment | Typically within 6 weeks of a complete claim | Paid by the Insolvency Service’s Redundancy Payments Service from the National Insurance Fund, not company assets |
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If the company goes into insolvency, employees can usually claim unpaid wages, holiday pay, notice and redundancy pay from the government's Redundancy Payments Service, up to statutory limits. Directors who were also employees may be able to claim too.
General information, not advice about your company.
Methodology and source
This timeline is built from gov.uk’s own guidance on claiming redundancy and other money owed by an insolvent employer, checked directly against the live gov.uk pages before publishing rather than copied from a secondary source. The 6-month claim deadline and roughly 6-week payment turnaround are gov.uk’s own stated figures, not this site’s estimate. Use our employee redundancy calculator to estimate the redundancy element itself, and see HMRC tax debt and the UK company insolvency tracker for the wider picture of why employers reach this point.
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