Redundancy help / advice please

johnathome_2

Hi,

I'm after a bit of advice if possible - sorry if this is a long story.

My other half was called into a meeting this week saying that the department she works in is being restructured, but there will be no loss of head count, and was informed that all staff would be individually briefed.

At her individual meeting, she was told that her role was at risk of redundancy and was told that she could go home for the day if she wanted to. She received a letter the next day stating that they are planning on making her role redundant on 29th Jan. The reasons stated are to 'increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the department' and that a new role had been created that was 'more senior and significantly different' to her existing role. They have now advertised the new job internally and the role is the same as her existing role, but with slightly more responsibility. I think it's worth pointing out that out of the whole department, her role is the only one at risk of redundancy (out of approx 40 people)

She has worked at the company for over 17 years and 6 months ago, the company went through a big excercise making lots of people redundant, one of which was me unfortunately, so for them to do this to the other half 6 months later is a kick in the teeth, but that's not the point.

In the department she works in, there is another role similar to hers but responsible for another area of the business. But, the new job that they have created is stated as being responsible for this area, so we're questioning why this similar role is not also at risk of redundancy.

In addition, her two supervisors were shown three 'new' jobs and told that they could chose which one they wanted to do. As there are only two of them, this then leaves one additional 'new' role vacant - my other half was not advised of any of these roles in her meeting. She was only shown a list of existing vacancies within the company, but none of the jobs in her department appeared on the list.

She has a first consultation meeting booked for next week, so I'd just like to know whether people think this is a genuine redundancy, or it might fall into unfair dismissal, based on the fact that her job still exists, albeit with slightly more responsibility and she doesn't seem to have been told what selection criteria was used to chose her role?

Any help / advice greatly received.