Notification of redundancy appeal meeting

An employee has no statutory right to appeal against a redundancy dismissal. However, it’s preferable still to give the employee an opportunity to appeal as part of an overall fair dismissal procedure. Use our letter when an employee appeals against a redundancy dismissal decision, to inform them of the date and time of the appeal meeting.

On appeal

We recommend that, to comply with general principles of fairness, you allow the employee the chance to appeal against any decision reached to dismiss on redundancy grounds. This means, if the employee does appeal, someone other than you should consider all the circumstances to see if the redundancy dismissal decision reached was fair. Use our Notification of Redundancy Appeal Meeting to invite the employee to an appeal meeting.

The appeal meeting

If they appeal, you should hold an appeal meeting. The person who chairs the appeal meeting should be a different person in the management structure than the original decision-maker and, if possible, they should not have been previously involved at all in the original redundancy process relating to the employee, although, of course, since overall redundancy decisions are taken at board level, it is to be expected that they may have had some input in the decision to implement a redundancy programme in the first place. What really matters is that the person chairing the appeal should preferably not have been involved in the decision to select the particular employee for redundancy. The chair must act as impartially as possible and must give the employee a full and fair opportunity to explain the basis for their appeal and make representations. After the appeal meeting, the chair should notify the employee in writing of the final decision.