Does my time working in France count towards my length of service for unfair dismissal?

The situation

I have been working for the same UK-based marketing firm for about four years now. I started my role in London back in March 2020. However, for a period of roughly six months between June 2022 and December 2022, my manager sent me to our satellite office in Paris to help oversee a specific project. During those six months, I was physically working in France every single day, and my pay was processed through the UK payroll, though I am not entirely sure if the company was paying the usual secondary National Insurance contributions for those specific months while I was abroad. Last week, the company told me they are terminating my contract due to redundancy, but they are claiming that because I was working overseas for that half-year, I don't actually have the full two years of continuous service required to claim unfair dismissal. I have already checked my old payslips and contract, which both say I am a UK employee, but I am confused about whether those months in France break my continuity of employment or if they should be included in my total time with the company when calculating my rights.

Detailed Analysis

Under the Employment Rights Act 1996, your period of employment can include time spent working outside of Great Britain^[1]. However, there is a specific rule regarding whether those weeks count toward your total length of service.

A week of employment does not count in computing a period of employment if you were "employed outside Great Britain during the whole or part of the week, and... was not during that week an employed earner for the purposes of the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992 in respect of whom a secondary Class 1 contribution was payable"^[1].

In plain language, a 'secondary Class 1 contribution' is the National Insurance tax that your employer must pay on top of your salary. If your marketing firm was required to pay these contributions for you while you were in the Paris office, those six months (June 2022 to December 2022) should be included in your total service. If they were not required to pay them, those weeks might not count toward your total time.

Crucially, even if those weeks do not count toward your total length of service, the law states that "the continuity of the period is not broken by reason only that the week does not count"^[1]. This means your employment is viewed as one continuous block from March 2020 to the present, rather than two separate jobs.

Regarding your redundancy, the law defines when the continuity of employment is broken, such as when a redundancy payment has been previously paid and a new contract is signed^[2]. Based on your facts, your continuity should not be broken simply because you moved to a satellite office.

The main uncertainty is whether you were an 'employed earner' for whom secondary National Insurance was payable during your time in France. If this is disputed, an officer of the Commissioners of Inland Revenue can determine the issue^[1].

Statutory Citations

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