2 periods of employment for voluntary redundancy

middlewife

Morning all, 
My OH is in the process of negotiating voluntary reundancy, using a no compromise agreement ( had compulsory twice when we were paying a mortgage!) now he's 65, he will take it and hopefully we can stretch the payments til he gets state Pension next November ( he has a pension on ice with Aviva, which we could access if needed, plus a small DB in payment, I work part time and claim NHS DB pension so we are not going to be destitute).

Lawyer was later made aware of two periods of employment with his employer, 5 years service 20 years ago, and currently will be 4 years service. She advised to contact employer as she would charge us to submit a separate query. OH did so and, unsurprisingly, was told "no".
However, just wondered if anyone has ever been able to negotiate including prior service as it would make another 8 weeks money, particularly as he's going voluntarily, saving them having to go down the longer compulsory route.
Many thanks.....

MyRealNameToo

so he had a 20 year break but you want to try and claim it was continuous service?

What was the mechanism of their leaving 20 years ago? 

Brie

Frankly I've never heard of anyone getting earlier service included with such a long break.  I had a manager who'd had about a year break and the longer earlier service wasn't included.  And even people with shorter breaks had no luck with this.  Employers I've been with use to have people on contracts to just short of 2 years and then starting another contract about a month later so no rights could be accrued.    

Of course it's always worth asking but I'm not surprised the answer was no.

Meanwhile check what else might be affected by redundancy such as sharesave, sharepurchase, health benefits etc.  I was lucky to be made redundant when 64 but missed a trick about moving company shares to get a better tax benefit.

EnPointe

MyRealNameToo said:

so he had a 20 year break but you want to try and claim it was continuous service?

What was the mechanism of their leaving 20 years ago? 

exactly  the Only scenario i'm aware of where previous service is counted is  a few  Public sector  employers where previous  service can count for things like holiday entitlement  ( if / when i go back to any NHS job i jump straight to 10 + years leave entitlement , but  everythign else  counts  for day 1  of the new engagement  as  brreak in service is  over 1 year) 

middlewife

Thanks everyone. Not worth instructing lawyer to pursue that line then. He hasn't got shares, they've included pension and medical insurance for 3 months and company car lieu payments so it's not a bad deal, but every little helps