Redundancy

Especially in these tough economic times you may find yourself having to make redundancies.  Redundancy has a specific legal meaning that does not apply to every situation where changes need to be made to the workforce.

Employees enjoy the benefit of what can be very complex legal protections in a redundancy situation.

If 20 or more employees are likely to be affected then there are statutory minimum consultation periods and procedures. Even if less employees than this are involved you would be expected to carry out a proper consultation process, select the employees to be made redundant fairly and consider whether there are any suitable alternative vacancies.

If there are any suitable vacancies then an employee has a right to a 4 week trial period in that new job.

Anyone with at least 2 years’ continuous service will be entitled to a statutory redundancy payment.

You are not allowed to select for redundancy by discriminating against you on the grounds of age, sex, race, sexual orientation or disability or because of various other reasons, such as trade union activities. Selection  for any of those reasons will be automatically be considered unfair entitling the employee to bring a claim for compensation and reinstatement.

If the statutory consultation procedures apply and are not followed the starting point in damages would be 13 weeks’ pay for each employee affected – getting it wrong can be very costly.

Rees Page can advise at every step from the initial consideration that you may need to make redundancies, through the selection and consultation process and right up to defending any Tribunal Claims – although our advice will always be aimed at avoiding those being brought in the first place.