5 Redundancy Procedure Errors That Create Tribunal Claims

Why Redundancy Procedure Matters More Than Ever

From January 2027, the unfair dismissal qualifying period drops from 2 years to 6 months under the Employment Rights Act 2025. This means employees dismissed — including by redundancy — in month 7 of their employment can bring an unfair dismissal claim. A flawed redundancy process that previously affected only longer-serving staff now creates tribunal risk from almost the beginning of employment.

These are the errors that employment tribunals see repeatedly in redundancy cases.

Error 1: No Genuine Pool of Selection

Redundancy requires that a role — not a person — is no longer required. Where multiple people do the same or similar work, the employer must define a “pool” of employees who are at risk and select from that pool using fair criteria. Selecting one specific employee while others doing the same work are not at risk almost always indicates the dismissal was not genuine redundancy.

The pool must be defined before selection criteria are applied. Defining it after to justify a predetermined outcome is a process error that tribunals identify quickly.

Error 2: Using Subjective Selection Criteria

Selection criteria must be objective, measurable, and consistently applied. “Attitude”, “team fit”, and “commitment” are not objective criteria. Acceptable criteria include: attendance records (adjusted for disability-related absence), performance against measurable targets, skills and qualifications, length of service (as one of several criteria, not the only one).

Scoring must be documented. Tribunals regularly request to see selection matrix scores, and undocumented or retrospectively created scores are treated with scepticism.

Error 3: Inadequate Consultation

Individual consultation is required in all redundancy cases — this is separate from the collective consultation obligation (which triggers at 20+ redundancies in 90 days). Individual consultation must be meaningful: the employee must have a genuine opportunity to suggest alternatives to redundancy, challenge the selection criteria and scores, and propose alternative roles.

Consultation that consists of a single meeting where the decision is presented as fait accompli is not adequate consultation. The number of meetings required depends on the circumstances, but at minimum there should be one meeting to propose redundancy and a second to consider the employee’s response before a final decision is made.

Error 4: Failing to Consider Alternative Employment

Before making an employee redundant, the employer must take reasonable steps to identify suitable alternative employment within the organisation (including associated employers). If a suitable alternative is available and the employer fails to offer it, the dismissal is likely unfair even if the redundancy itself was genuine.

Suitable alternative employment is a role that is not substantially different from the employee’s current role in terms of capacity, place of work, terms and conditions, and skills required. Employees have a 4-week trial period to assess a new role without losing redundancy rights.

Error 5: Calculating Statutory Redundancy Pay Incorrectly

Statutory redundancy pay is calculated using a formula based on age, length of service (capped at 20 years), and weekly pay (capped at £643 per week from April 2026). Each complete year of service counts as: 0.5 weeks’ pay (under 22), 1 week’s pay (22–40), 1.5 weeks’ pay (41+). The maximum statutory redundancy payment is £19,290 (2026/27 figures).

Common calculation errors include using the wrong cap on weekly pay, not accounting for age brackets across a long career, and failing to include contractual redundancy pay where the contract provides for more than the statutory minimum.