The letter arrives and it sounds so final.
Formal wording, a leaving date, HR copied in. It has the weight of something already decided — and that's the point of writing it that way. Almost nobody reads a letter like that and thinks right, let's check whether they were allowed to do this.
So let's check. Eight things. Take a pen.
You should have a letter setting out the redundancy, your leaving date, your notice, and how your redundancy pay was calculated.
If you've got nothing in writing, or a letter with a total but no workings, ask for the calculation. Employers get this wrong constantly — usually by ignoring the age bands, using net pay instead of gross, or getting your start date wrong.
This is where most redundancies fail.
Consultation has to happen before the decision is final, at a point where what you say could still change something. One meeting where you're told what's happening isn't consultation, whatever the invitation called it.
Listen to the tense they used. "We are proposing" is consultation. "Your role has been made redundant" is an announcement. If your first meeting was past tense, write down the date and the exact words while you still remember them.
Where 20 or more people at one site are at risk within 90 days, three extra duties kick in.
Consultation with elected representatives or a recognised union. A minimum period before the first dismissal — 30 days for 20 to 99 people, 45 days for 100 or more. And a Form HR1 filed with the government.
If twenty of you went and no representatives were ever elected, something went wrong. The tribunal award for this is separate from anything else you might claim, it doesn't need two years' service, and it doesn't need you to have lost a penny.
You should have been put in a pool and scored against measurable criteria — skills, experience, performance, attendance, disciplinary record.
Ask for your scores. You're entitled to them, it's free, and they have a month to respond. Don't write that letter from scratch, though — there's a formal scoring matrix request already drafted and ready to send on the action plan page, along with a Subject Access Request if they stall. Fill in your details, copy, send. Ten minutes.
Then compare the scores against your last appraisal. A strong review in March and a weak score in September is a contradiction that's very hard to explain away.
They have a duty to search for suitable alternative work across the whole organisation, including group companies — and to tell you about vacancies rather than wait for you to find them.
Were you sent the internal vacancy list? Were you offered anything? If they claim there was nothing, check whether they were advertising externally at the same time. Screenshot job adverts, because they vanish.
Then your protection is much stronger.
If you're pregnant or within 18 months of the birth, you have priority over other candidates for a suitable alternative vacancy. Not equal consideration — priority. Failing to offer it makes the dismissal automatically unfair, with no two-year service requirement.
Being selected shortly after coming back from maternity leave is worth taking seriously.
You're entitled to appeal, and entitled to be accompanied at meetings. If your concerns were brushed off, or the appeal was heard by the same person who made the original decision, note it.
The appeal letter is the one people put off longest, usually because they don't know how to start it. It's on the action plan page too. Use it — the deadline in their letter is often only five working days.
Selection for trade union membership or activity is automatically unfair from your first day of employment. If you're the rep and you're the one who went, ask that question directly.
The bit that decides everything
Three months minus one day from your dismissal to start ACAS early conciliation. You have to do that before you can bring a tribunal claim.
Miss it and it's normally gone — however clearly they got it wrong, however strong your evidence. I've put that bluntly because it's the most expensive mistake people make, and they usually make it while doing everything else right.
So if two or three of these eight are ringing bells, don't sit with it for six weeks. Go to the action plan, send the appeal and the scoring request, and call ACAS on 0300 123 1100.
All 14 letters are free to generate and copy. If you'd rather have the lot as Word documents you can edit and keep, that's £4.99 — but you don't need to pay anything to send the ones that matter today.https://myredundancyrights.co.uk/action-plan
And if it all checks out
Then you've lost nothing by looking, and you get to stop wondering. That's worth something too.
Full checklist and plain-English FAQ: https://myredundancyrights.co.uk/faq