Legal Advice Re Redundancy Package

[LondonManc]

Friend of mine has been made redundant after 14 years service and has been offered a payout.

Is there any online legal service that anyone knows of where you can pay a fee, submit documentation & have them tell you whether everything is above board or if the company is trying to pull a fast one?

Use this calculator:
https://www.gov.uk/calculate-your-redundancy-pay

The payout will often come in the form of a compromise agreement; it will come in at a few grand higher than the basic offer, but this is full and final settlement and protects them from any claims of constructive dismissal or similar. The costs of a solicitor to explain your friend's offer would be covered by the employer. If they've no real grounds for complaints about being let go, then compromise agreements generally work well in favour of the dismissee.

[Fred Bloggs]

First step is the mate a union member? If yes go there for advice.

Second step does he have legal assistance with his house insurance? This may well cover it, mine did when I was made redundant and I had the deal revewed by the lawyers before I agreed to it.

Third step, if neither of those, then try the local citizens advice bearueu for help. They will certainly point you in the right direction.

HTH.

[Big Blue Plymouth]

If she was offered the statutory minimum, then it is probably worth hunting down for any lapse in process to badger them for more (i.e. correct consultation period, did she have a written statement of terms and conditions, was it a genuine redundancy, was the reason she was chosen over someone else fair - not discrimination?).

Yes, looks like the statutory minimum.

They've had a headcount and decided that they only needed 3 out of the current 4 staff to perform the role.

She was offered another role (technically a demotion) but on the same salary and T&Cs. It required her to relocate which she did not want to do.

[chopper]

Thanks very much. Will pass this advice on.

HA - no she's not likely to be showing up on Cuk anytime soon as she's in property management.

If she was offered the statutory minimum, then it is probably worth hunting down for any lapse in process to badger them for more (i.e. correct consultation period, did she have a written statement of terms and conditions, was it a genuine redundancy, was the reason she was chosen over someone else fair - not discrimination?).

Any doubts, then hopefully she has Family Legal Protection with the home insurance, but failing that ACAS can help anyway. Often firms would make a small gesture to make it go away. Even though the person being made redundant has to pay to initiate tribunal proceedings, they are very costly and time consuming for the business and since costs cannot be recovered, it is worth paying out.

If she has been given a generous payoff, then there is no point persuing it further. Ultimately, any tribunal would evaluate statutory compensations, and a generous payoff would exceed these.


n.b. In a past life, I ran a business and employed a handful of staff, mainly techies but one sales. In eighteen months, she literally sold *nothing*. So since my sales department wasn't contributing to the front line, I decided to close it down and make her redundant. The process was fair, she was entitled to no redundancy payoff, so she got the consultation period (one week - it was one redundancy) and one month's notice. Imagine my surprise when I got a call from ACAS saying she thought it was unfair and looked for a payout. We offered £500, she declined. The tribunal forms turned up and a solicitor was engaged. This was when the tribunal was free to claimants. She claimed sex discrimination (not possible, she was one person on a team of one), she claimed she could have been retrained into a techie job (I did have a techie start around the same time, but I needed a techie, not someone who one time when Google search wasn't working, we suggested she used Yahoo instead. She asked us how to get to Yahoo if Google wasn't working...). She also claimed she didn't have a written employment contract.

The solicitor bills mounted quickly defending a bollocks claim. Ultimately, she had no case, but the solicitor recommended reaffirming our offer of £500 as that would be cheaper than our day in court to prove a point. Which she accepted. You could tell it was advice from a moron in the pub, as she accepted £500 and nothing else. A field day was had when, a few weeks later, a reference request rocked up for a job she was applying for. Oh yes, she failed to negotiate a good reference.

But this was £500 in compensation, £2000 in solicitors bills plus unquantifiable amounts of my time wasted dealing with this and stressing about it.

(one reason why I'm a lot happier being one man pimping himself out without the arseache of being an employer. Plan B just doesn't appeal at the moment where it involves having people on my payroll.)

[Big Blue Plymouth]

Useful stuff

More useful stuff

Thanks very much. Will pass this advice on.

HA - no she's not likely to be showing up on Cuk anytime soon as she's in property management.

[mackenzie99d]

If it's redundancy, apart from the statutory minimum it's up to the employer how generous they are. They would have had to follow
strict procedures and if you need to check up on these then the ACAS website and hotline are really helpful. My mrs has used their hotline
a lot recently due to work issues and was very impressed. If this isn't a proper redundancy and the company just want's your friend to leave then they need to then agree a compromise agreement which is very different and requires proper legal involvement. I've been through that myself and although it was quite stressful I ended up getting a decent payout.

[handyandy]

BBP,

sorry to hear your friend is being made redundant. CUK is not that silly a place to ask the question you asked given lots of people who were perm end up contracting after a similar experience.

I'm afraid I don't have a specific recommendation but to a certain extent it will depend on what size of package your friend is offered. As a rough rule of thumb if it is less than £30k in total then a high street legal firm should have someone with employment law experience that could review it. Significantly more than that and it is probably sensible to go a a specialist firm of employment lawyers.

Two things to bear in mind - often companies making someone redundant will ask them to sign a 'compromise' agreement. If they do then the company usually offer to make a contribution to the employees legal costs for getting it checked. If you friend is being asked to sign a compromise agreement then he really does need advice as they can have some restrictive clauses in them.

The other thing to check is whether he has something called 'family legal protection' as part of his home insurance policy. They are often sold as extras for about £20 extra premium and cover a whole range of things - often one of the risks covered is an employment law dispute, which redundancy usually fits.

Some final notes on redundancy;

Some firms pay the absolute minimum which is your notice period plus one weeks pay for every year of service (with the weeks pay capped at around £200). That's pretty poor and if you are in that situation then it may be worth legally challenging whether it is redundancy or unfair dismissal. At the other end of the scale companies offer the notice period plus a month of actual salary for every year of service (which for your friend is going to be almost 1.5 years salary) - that kind of deal is often worth going for especially as the first £30k is free of tax.

Best of luck to your mate - maybe we'll see him as a nube contractor on CUK in the next few months.

HA

[malvolio]

Thanks pal, thanks a lot.

Google doesn't exactly tell you if the service is any good does it? I thought maybe somebody who had experience of using such a service may be able to recommend something.

Contractors don't do redundancy...

But for what it's worth there are very clear rules on the conditions under which it applies and your minimum entitlement; no doubt you will find them somewhere on .Gov.UK. Anything better than that is good, anything less is illegal.

[Big Blue Plymouth]

Either of you think to try Google?

Thanks pal, thanks a lot.

Google doesn't exactly tell you if the service is any good does it? I thought maybe somebody who had experience of using such a service may be able to recommend something.

[northernladuk]

Either of you think to try Google?

[Big Blue Plymouth]

Friend of mine has been made redundant after 14 years service and has been offered a payout.

Is there any online legal service that anyone knows of where you can pay a fee, submit documentation & have them tell you whether everything is above board or if the company is trying to pull a fast one?