How to recognise redundancies

Considering it’s over 40 years since the Redundancy Payments Act 1965 first came into effect, and the Employment Rights Act 1996 was established over a decade ago, you might think that the meaning of “redundancy” would be clear by now. Unfortunately, it isn’t.

There are two definitions of redundancy: one in the Employment Rights Act (section 139) relating to redundancy pay, and one in the Trade Union Reform and Employment Rights Act 1993 (section 34) concerning the requirement under EU directives for collective consultation.