I would like a little bit of advice re - redundancy please

dontone

Hi all.

Please could someone give me some advice regarding my work situation? Sorry this post is going to bit long.

I have been working in a small department of eight employees for a company for 8 years. On Monday we were all told that a big contract was being terminated and that we were all on "potential redundacy notice".
This has turned out as we were all being laid off at the end of next month - so theres no "potential" about it. We have all received letters stating "potential redundancy" and how much we are due to get in payment.
My job is doing all the admin work that comes in, and involves various duties that is basically doing bits of other roles that others do full time in the company. (buying, selling, meeting suppliers, reception duties, picking items - a jill of all trades IYSWIM)
I have been offered a seperate role in the company in another department (sales) but have politely declined as it is a lot less money, the atmosphere is generally awful (one of the things that goes off is that the others are very "cliquey" and if they don't like you and you don't follow their lead they make your life hell) and I have already done a similar role in another company and see it a massive step back. They have already interviewed people for the role and decided that they were setting someone on already.
Now today I have found out that the managment have realised that they need someone to do my job in the next few months and are going to delegate someone in another department to do the role. This is a full time job that I do and they are expecting the person to do my job as well as their own. They are deciding whether the new employee will be the person to do it earning the wage on the less paid job I was offered.
I am now rather confused by this turn of events as I was under the impression that my job was ceasing to exist. I have not had an opportunity to even apply for my own job as they have told me that it has gone and I had my chance to stay with the company and I should "be grateful" that I was offered another postition and I was "silly" for turning the sales job down.
I am under the impression that I turned only a sales job down as nothing about my current role was mentioned and a full description of the role and job title was that of a sales clerk. I wasn't even asked in an formal way as the question came 2nd hand from my line manager. kind of "do you want the sales job before the new person starts?"
I don't know what to do now as I am rather annoyed that the management have told me that I will be training the new person up to do my job in the next few weeks. I'm also offended by the "silly" comments, because I declined a job that someone was already offered, who has left their job and was set to start but they have held them back because they expected me to say yes to the job. It wasn't fair of me or them to leave someone in the lurch like that.
Is there any way I can put in some sort of grievence? The company doesn't even have a HR dept so I'm screwed there in that respect..
Can someone point me in the right direction? I've never been in this postition before so am a bit stuck. Thanks for any help/comments in advance.

My apologies for such a ramble - I just needed to get it off my chest. Everything has happened so fast.

tonyd19565

You have to seek advice from either a union or CAB this will point you in the direction of some material on your rights regarding redundancy.http://www.acas.org.uk/index.aspx?articleid=1611

Without knowing all the details you cannot obtain clear advice but if your job still exists, you cannot be redundant

getmore4less

I think they can do what they are doing.

Merging two jobs and creating a new one.

BUT since the new job is substantialy part of your old job I think you should argue that the selection pool should be between the people doing both the current rolls.

Problem is that the new position is [potentialy one that you may still not want if the renumertaion for the new roll is less than your current renumeration.