Dismissal on notice letter due to redundancy letter

You should only use this letter where the employee has been employed for less than two years and you are making less than 20 redundancies within a 90-day period. This is because longer-serving employees have unfair dismissal rights so they need to be treated differently in the redundancy procedure to be adopted and large redundancy programmes will invoke collective consultation obligations.

Redundancy of short-serving employees

This letter should only be used for short-serving employees who do not have the right to claim unfair dismissal. An employee can generally make a claim for unfair dismissal if they have been employed for two years or more. Generally, where an employee has shorter service, their only legal entitlements are to their contractual notice period (or to pay in lieu if you do not wish them to work out this period), to all outstanding wages up to the date of termination of their employment and to pay in lieu of accrued but untaken annual leave entitlement. They are also not entitled to a statutory redundancy payment because of their short service, but there is nothing to stop you paying an ex gratia redundancy payment should you wish to do so, plus you will need to check whether the employee is entitled to a contractual redundancy payment. These issues are all covered in our Dismissal on Notice due to Redundancy Letter.

collective consultation

If you’re proposing to make 20 or more redundancies within a 90-day period, you are under statutory obligations to consult with either recognised trade unions or, if there is no recognised trade union, with employee representatives and also to notify the Redundancy Payments Service, even if some or all of those employees only have less than two years’ service.

Employees with longer continuous employment

Where an employee has been employed by you for two years or more, they have the right to claim unfair dismissal. In order to defend an unfair dismissal claim, you would need to show both a potentially fair reason for dismissal and that you treated the employee fairly in the dismissal procedure you followed. You would therefore need to go through a much more detailed redundancy procedure.