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One of the most important aspects of redundancy law is the provision of redundancy payment, which seeks to compensate your employees for their dismissal with a tax-free sum that proportionately reflects the length of service they have given to your company, provided they have been working with you for more than two years.
Although often used by many people as a synonym for any kind of dismissal, redundancy is actually a well-defined legal term that refers to a specific type of dismissal. Redundancy is when a person is dismissed because they are no longer needed by your company. Generally, this happens for one of three reasons:
According to redundancy law, a redundancy may count as unfair dismissal if unreasonable criteria have been used to select the individual being made redundant. For the redundancy to be fair, you must have created a justifiable set of criteria which are used to select the employee or employees to be made redundant (e.g. length of service, skills, qualifications or disciplinary proceedings), and you must then apply these criteria rigorously and without bias to all the employees being considered for redundancy.
If you can be shown to have selected an employee for redundancy using irrelevant or unjustifiable criteria (for example for reasons relating to age, sex, race or disability), then you would be regarded by an Employment Tribunal as not having carried out the selection process in a fair manner, and there is every likelihood that the redundancy would be classed as unfair dismissal, with all the inherent consequences this entails. You may also be faced with a discrimination claim.
If you are unsure how to instigate a redundancy process, or you require further more detailed information about the law regulating redundancies, Ashby Cohen can help you to redress the balance. We specialise in employment law cases, and our years of experience as employment lawyers make us uniquely qualified to assist you with any redundancy issues you may have. Please contact us for an initial free consultation.
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