Redundancy Annouced whilst on sick leave

biggaz26

Yesterday I was adviced that my position was under concideration for redundancy and that I was being placed on Gardening leave for the 30 day consultation period.

I am currently on sick leave recovering from a leg op and would not be back to full duties for at least another 3 weeks maybe up to 9.

Ive been with the company 8 years in May and in my current role since May last year. I also have a company car, phone, laptop and am part of a personal heath care scheme which i am currently using for my recovery from my op.

My worries and questions are:-

My redundancy date (and it will be redundancy) will be 15th March so should my pay out include outstanding holidays not taken (i get 25 days per year and have taken 2)?

Will i still be able to continue to use the health care scheme for my recovery if I have been made redundant?

Do the company have to wait for my sick leave to be up before they serve my notice?

Am I entitled to use the car for a period after my employement finishes? I heard somewhere that they are not supposed to leave you car-less immediately.

Im sure ill have some other questions but I cant think what they are right now.

Thanks in advance

Biggaz

getmore4less

Date of notice may be critical to the service calculation for redundancy.

When was the exact start date?

whats your contractual notice will this be worked or PILON?

Acrued unused holiday should get paid, Stat min is 28 days so don't forget to prorata the BH.

Sick makes no difference you can be served notice when sick.


Use the consulting period it's there for a reason.

zzzLazyDaisy

biggaz26 wrote: »

Yesterday I was adviced that my position was under concideration for redundancy and that I was being placed on Gardening leave for the 30 day consultation period.

My worries and questions are:-

My redundancy date (and it will be redundancy) will be 15th March so should my pay out include outstanding holidays not taken (i get 25 days per year and have taken 2)?

Your holiday entitlement continues to accrue while you are off sick. Any untaken leave should be paid through the payroll with your final wages and will be subject to deductions for tax and NI


Will i still be able to continue to use the health care scheme for my recovery if I have been made redundant?

Normally the answer to this is 'no' unless you negotiate to be allowed to stay on the company scheme for a period after your employment ends (this is possible but not automatic, so you need to raise this at the consultation meeting). The alternative is to transfer from the company scheme to an individual scheme, it is possible to do this with BUPA and keep cover for existing illnesses provided you do it without a break, but of course you do have to pay the premiums.

Do the company have to wait for my sick leave to be up before they serve my notice?

No.

Am I entitled to use the car for a period after my employement finishes? I heard somewhere that they are not supposed to leave you car-less immediately.

You have been misinformed. You are entitled to the car under a term of your contract. Your entitlement to the car ends when your contract ends. However if they give you a payment in lieu of notice instead of keeping you in employment during your notice period, you are entitled to compensation for loss of the vehicle, but as that is calculated by reference to the value of the benefit in kind for P11D purposes, that often does not come any where near the cost to you of finding a replacement vehicle

Im sure ill have some other questions but I cant think what they are right now.

Thanks in advance

Biggaz

I hope this helps.

Note: I have not commented in the fairness or otherwise of the redundancy process as you haven't asked, and in any event, we don't have enough information.

biggaz26

getmore4less wrote: »

Date of notice may be critical to the service calculation for redundancy.
March 15th will be the end of consultation and beginning of notice, whixh I will be PILON this will give me just shy of 7 years 10 months service

When was the exact start date?

13th Feb was begining of consultation. 15th March consultation will end an notice will be served and I started working for the company 23th May 2005 (maybe a day or two out)

whats your contractual notice will this be worked or PILON?

30 days and ill be PILON

Acrued unused holiday should get paid, Stat min is 28 days so don't forget to prorata the BH.

Sick makes no difference you can be served notice when sick.


Use the consulting period it's there for a reason.

how do you mean use it? are you talking about finding another job? well of course I will do that. I just want to make sure I know my rights as this is the first redundancy I have faced after more than 2 years service

Thanks both for your advice so far

zzzLazyDaisy

Just a note on calculation of redundancy pay. If your employment is terminated before the end of the notice period (ie with a PILON), the relevant date for calculating statutory redundancy pay is the date that your employment would have ended if you had worked your notice. SRP is calculated on complete years of service, so at the moment you have 7 years' service. So if working your notice would have given you 8 years, that means the SRP should be calculated on 8 years' service, not 7 years.

Hope that makes sense.

Dx

sandrahr

You have the right to consultation where you should ask your employer for clarification of these issues. You should attend any consultation meetings even if you are sick - these could be in your home, on site or in neutral venue - ask your employer when they contact you which I hope they will. Failing to consult before redundancy is illegal in terms of employment law.

getmore4less

if thye are giving notice and terminating 15 March they need to give you 7 (statutory)weeks PILON not 30 days

Statutory notice(not contractual notice) gets added to the date of notice and if this take you to a date beyond termination date then the latter date is used for redundancy service, this will be 3rd may so only 7 years for redundancy.

if birthday 42 or more occurs during the 7 weeks it will add a 1/2 week to the redundancy

biggaz26

Thanks for the above.

I have more questions.

The process has gone through and I was made redundant on 15th March

I have since appealed on the following grounds

• In our first meeting, on 13th February at 10am, in which I was informed was for a business brief and attended whist on sick leave, we discussed the potential decision to make myself and another redundant, I signed a form which held details of what had been discussed in the meeting and you advised that a copy would be provided and it was not.

• During a one to one meeting on 6th March held at Costa Coffee, I requested a signed copy of my contract of employment and this has never been received. Also during this meeting I asked if the details of redundancy process where in this document which I was told it was not. No details of how to get this have been provided.

• At no point was I made aware that I could be accompanied by a work colleague or union representative, until the letter sent on behalf of my boss dated 14th March which invited me to the final redundancy meeting.

• This was emailed to my personal email as a scan of the original, which has never been received, I was not advised that this letter was sent via email and did not check my email until Saturday 16th March and as a result I was not made aware that I had a right to be accompanied by a work colleague or union representative until after the event. The time stamp on this email is at 4.12pm. This means that I was advised in writing of this meeting with less than 24 hours notice.

Anyone any ideas what goes on in an appeal. Just so I know what to expect and how to go about it.

zzzLazyDaisy

biggaz26 wrote: »

Thanks for the above.

I have more questions.

The process has gone through and I was made redundant on 15th March

I have since appealed on the following grounds

• In our first meeting, on 13th February at 10am, in which I was informed was for a business brief and attended whist on sick leave, we discussed the potential decision to make myself and another redundant, I signed a form which held details of what had been discussed in the meeting and you advised that a copy would be provided and it was not.

• During a one to one meeting on 6th March held at Costa Coffee, I requested a signed copy of my contract of employment and this has never been received. Also during this meeting I asked if the details of redundancy process where in this document which I was told it was not. No details of how to get this have been provided.

• At no point was I made aware that I could be accompanied by a work colleague or union representative, until the letter sent on behalf of my boss dated 14th March which invited me to the final redundancy meeting.

• This was emailed to my personal email as a scan of the original, which has never been received, I was not advised that this letter was sent via email and did not check my email until Saturday 16th March and as a result I was not made aware that I had a right to be accompanied by a work colleague or union representative until after the event. The time stamp on this email is at 4.12pm. This means that I was advised in writing of this meeting with less than 24 hours notice.

Anyone any ideas what goes on in an appeal. Just so I know what to expect and how to go about it.

Okay, firstly, the things that you are complaining about, while unfortunate, are unlikely to make the decision to make you redundant 'unfair' in law.

To start with, there is no legal right to be accompanied at a redundancy consultation meeting, though many employers will allow this. So the shortness of notice isn't a 'procedural defect' in law. Similarly the notes of the meeting and the contract are unlikely to contain anything that would turn this into an unfair dismissal.

What you need to be focussing on is the reason that you were selected for redundancy, and is there are way of challenging that selection?

You haven't said how you came to be selected for redundancy, but if it is closure of the workplace, or the fact that your job has ceased to exist (perhaps owing to a business reorganisation), then this is a genuine reason for redundancy and probably not challengeable in a legal sense. In that case, you should be focussing on whether there are any other available roles within the organisation which you have the skills for (this is assuming that you wish to keep your job and pay back the severance package).

As far as the appeal meeting itself is concerned, you simply go in, explain why you thing the decision to make you redundant is unfair, state what you think should have been done differently and why you believe that this would have resulted in you keeping your job, and (if appropriate) given that your job no longer exists, what other vacancies exist within the company that you are capable of doing and which should have been offered to you as an alternative to you being made redundant. If you are going on your own, take your own notes. You may also find it helpful to print out a copy of your arguments and hand it in during the meeting to make sure you don't forget/miss anything.

But please don't get your hopes up. The reality of the current economic climate is that companies are cutting staff numbers. The employer has a duty to treat people fairly, but if the underlying reason for the redundancy is fair, any procedural defect will, at best, result in a couple of week's extra pay as compensation for the extra weeks' wages you would have got, if they had done the job properly - and you would have to make a tribunal claim to get that, which is not guaranteed, and would be stressful.

D

biggaz26

Thanks for the advise.

Im not sure that the decision is unfair in that case as it was a client that decided they didnt want the role I was in on their contract.

Not sure what I can go in with now and with the meeting this afternoon not sure how to play it?

Biggaz

zzzLazyDaisy

biggaz26 wrote: »

Thanks for the advise.

Im not sure that the decision is unfair in that case as it was a client that decided they didnt want the role I was in on their contract.

Not sure what I can go in with now and with the meeting this afternoon not sure how to play it?

Biggaz

In law the client cannot make the decision for the employer. So if you have a role within the company and a client decides they don't want you working on their contract, then it would be unlawful to dismiss you on the say so of the client, alone. It is up to the employer to try to find alternative work for you within the employer's organisation, or to find another contract for you to work on.

But, if your job has genuinely ceased to exist, and there is no other work for you, then this is going to be a fair redundancy because the employer is not required to create a new post for you, or keep you on, if there is genuinely no work for you.

Nevertheless, you have an appeal hearing, and I suggest that you do still go to it, because this is your chance to raise anything about the process that you are not happy about, and even if it doesn't change the eventual decision, you may still feel that you have had some questions answered and that you understand better why they have come to their decision. And who knows, maybe this might make them look again and maybe they might find another job to offer you. You won't know unless you try.