Redundancy help!

id1982

I was furloughed the end of March until the end of May, however last week I had a call to say that due the impact of COVID 19 on the business, my post is at risk of being made redundant and are currently in the consultation period. The decision will be made in 2 weeks time! 
The question I have is, if I am made redundant my notice period is 11 weeks,(11 years service) my position is furloughed to the end of May however they are now saying that they will extend that till end of June and this period will be part of  my notice period and will be paid at 80% is this right? as I feel this is unfair and my notice pay should be 100% (My basic salary).  They said it would benefit me because it would mean I would get 12 weeks notice pay instead of 11 because in June I would have been with the company 12 years, however I just feel they are saying this to lull me into thinking they are doing the right thing by me, where in fact they are potentially pulling a fast one and  using the government to claim my notice pay back  through furlough scheme. 

Another thing they are saying is that the redundancy pay is just calculated at my weekly basic pay and no bonuses are taken in to account! is this correct? my understanding from reading government website was that if you have a regular bonus then an average should be taken. 

JReacher1

As the point of the government scheme is to allow companies to keep employees employed for no cost to themselves I would be amazed if it is not against the terms of the scheme to use it as a way of making it cheaper to make staff redundant. 

I would seek professional legal advice. 

sharpe106

Have a read of the policy.

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/claim-for-wage-costs-through-the-coronavirus-job-retention-scheme

Although the relevant bit for you is at the end.

Employee rights

Employees still have the same rights at work, including:

• Statutory Sick Pay
• maternity and other parental rights
• rights against unfair dismissal
• redundancy payments

Grants cannot be used to substitute redundancy payments. HMRC will continue to monitor businesses after the scheme has closed.

So they can’t do it. But not really too sure what you can do about it if they do except report them to HMRC.

With regards to the bonus it depends what it for, what did you get the bonus for?

id1982

The bonus is a performance related one that we get monthly, for reaching targets, kpi's etc.
 I see in the quote above regarding the furlough grants not to be used to substitute redundancy payments but is "redundancy notice" separate to "redundnacy payment"? This is where I am getting stuck and worried they will be able to do it for the notice period!