Our employment lawyers advise both employers and employees on redundancy related legal issues.

For employers, if you have to make staff redundant, it is essential that you have the right policies and processes in place and that you follow your processes fairly and fully.

To complicate matters further for employers, it is not unusual for any employee claims which may arise based on redundancies to also include additional or alternative allegations of sex, race, age or disability discrimination.

Many employers decide that where redundancies are necessary, to avoid the possibility of any claims later, it’s better to offer staff voluntary redundancy or a settlement agreement. We are experienced in both areas. Please do get in contact.

If you are deciding on making employee redundancies and want to ensure you minimise the chances of any legal claims afterwards, we can help. Please do get in contact.

Redundancy legal advice for employees

As an employee you are fully within your rights to ensure that if you are notified you are potentially going to be made redundant that any decision is fair legally.

You should also be aware that in many redundancy situations, you may be able to negotiate an enhanced redundancy payment. As employment lawyers who represent employees in redundancy situations and potential disputes over redundancy, we are experienced in both the right way, timing for and negotiations with employers over redundancy.

If you believe that you have been unfairly dismissed by way of redundancy, our employment lawyers can take steps to protect your interests and to ensure the employer can justify the dismissal both in terms of selection of employees and process. We also provide specialist help for employees who are considering appealing against a redundancy dismissal.

Examples of potentially unfair redundancy

• An employer replaces a redundant employee, or intends to do so in the near future
• Where an employer criticises an employee’s performance and then makes them redundant This may indicate that the dismissal is more about poor performance than a genuine redundancy
• Only 1 employee in a large team is selected for redundancy without any warning or process
• The selected employee is pregnant or is the only employee from an ethnic minority, is disabled, gay or of a particular religion, in which case their dismissal may be unfair and discriminatory
• An employee has had a poor relationship with their line manager, which might indicate their dismissal is for a reason other than redundancy