Collective redundancy information and consultation checklist

Redundancy is a potentially fair reason for dismissal but you must still act reasonably. This means that you must properly explore other options to redundancy, fully consult with the affected employees, adopt a fair selection procedure and offer suitable alternative employment to the redundant employees if any is available.

Obligations

As well as your duty to consult individually with affected employees, where 20 or more employees may be made redundant within a period of 90 days or less in one establishment, you have additional collective consultation obligations.  Our Checklist lists the things you will need to consider and do in relation to these obligations.  Note that you may need to take legal advice over the “one establishment” criteria before deciding on what consultation plans you intend to follow due to recent case law, unless you intend to count all of your sites as a single establishment.

Collective consultation

Before collective consultation can begin, you must disclose the following information in writing to the appropriate representatives:

• the reasons for the proposed redundancies
• the number and description of those employees proposed to be dismissed as redundant (e.g. by reference to department, job title or location)
• the total number of employees of any such description employed at the establishment in question
• the proposed method of selecting the employees who may be dismissed
• the proposed method of carrying out the dismissals, with due regard to any agreed procedure, including the period over which the dismissals are proposed to take effect
• the proposed method of calculating the amount of any non-statutory redundancy payments to be made to redundant employees
• the number of agency workers working temporarily for you and under your supervision and direction, the parts of the business undertaking in which those agency workers are working and the type of work they are carrying out.

Collective consultation itself with the appropriate representatives must begin “in good time” and must in any event begin:

• where 100 or more redundancies are proposed at one establishment within a 90-day period, at least 45 days before the first dismissal is proposed to take effect
• where 20 to 99 redundancies are proposed at one establishment within a 90-day period, at least 30 days before the first dismissal is proposed to take effect.

Additionally, collective consultation must have been completed before notices of redundancy dismissal can be issued to employees. It’s therefore good practice to ensure collective consultation lasts for the full 30 or 45 days before any notices of dismissal are issued. Consultation must not be a sham exercise - there must be time for the appropriate representatives to properly consider the proposals being put to them and to express their views. It must include consultation about ways of avoiding the proposed redundancy dismissals, reducing the numbers of employees to be made redundant and mitigating the consequences of any redundancy dismissals that do take place. Consultation should also be undertaken with a view to reaching agreement with representatives.

TUPE

Where redundancies arise in connection with a transfer of a business, or change of service provider, and the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations (“TUPE”) apply, the information and consultation requirements under TUPE must also be complied with and see our TUPE Information and Consultation Checklist.