Redundancy , termination payment , NI and benefits

Groove

Hi all,

We've been told in the past couple of weeks were being made redundant on the 4th December. They are closing the entire office , and knocking the building down so there is no chance of us working our 3 month notice period.

We have negotiated a tax free termination payment ( equivalent to 3 months gross pay ) as well the stautory redundancy pay and use of our company cars for 3 months as our contracts contain no mention of PILON.

As we understand it this is not a PILON as our contract does not mention it , and as such as we have no way of working our notice period is seen as a Termination payment and is hence tax and NI free.

However this has left us with a few questions.

Whilst we seek new work how will we pay our NI ?

When would we qualify for JSA ( should we need to claim )

For Insurance policies ( Mortgage protection, redundancy protection etc ) when would the qualifying period start ? ( obviously most of these include deferred starts but when would the countdown effectively begin ? )

The confusion is because although our contract states 3 months notice we are effectively being prevented from working that and hence the tax free termination payment.

In the eyes of the govt/insurance companies would this 3 months still be taken into account before any claims can be made or can we effectively start claiming from day one ???

Thanks in advance

Andy