Redundancy process

Redundancy consultation: what your employer must do in October 2026

Updated 23 October 2026

If your employer is proposing to make you redundant in late October 2026, the law gives you two layers of protection. There is a collective consultation duty that bites when 20 or more people are at risk at the same establishment within a 90 day window, and there is an individual right to be consulted properly when only a few of you are at risk. Both rules are now backed by a 2024 statutory code of practice on dismissal and re engagement that the Employment Appeal Tribunal and employment tribunals are applying to redundancy processes. Here are the rights that apply right now.

When does collective redundancy consultation start in 2026

The trigger is straightforward. Where an employer proposes to dismiss as redundant 20 or more employees at one establishment within a period of 90 days or less, the duty to consult representatives begins before any of those dismissals take effect. The minimum consultation period is 30 days where the number proposed is 20 to 99, and 45 days where the number is 100 or more. The clock starts on the day consultation must begin, and the dismissals cannot land before the consultation period has run.

You can read the underlying duty in section 188 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992, and the 90 day aggregation rule sits in regulation 3 of the Collective Redundancies and Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) (Amendment) Regulations 2013. The 2024 Code of Practice on Dismissal and Re engagement, which the previous government laid before Parliament and which the current administration has continued to apply, gives tribunals a ready made set of expectations about what reasonable consultation looks like, including timing, the disclosure of information, and the willingness to consider counter proposals.

One frequently missed point is the notification to the Secretary of State for Business and Trade. Using the form HR1, the employer must notify the Insolvency Service at least 30 days before the first of 20 to 99 dismissals, and at least 45 days before the first of 100 or more. Late notification is itself a breach and can feed into a protective award for affected employees.

Who must your employer consult in a collective redundancy

Consultation is with representatives, not with the workforce as a whole. If your workplace recognises an independent trade union for the affected employees, the employer must consult that union. If not, the employer must arrange for the affected employees to elect their own representatives, and the time taken to do that counts against the consultation period unless the representatives are elected quickly enough to allow the period to run in full.

The information that has to be disclosed to those representatives under section 188(4) includes the reasons for the proposals, the numbers and categories of employees affected, the total number of employees in those categories, the proposed method of selection, the proposed method of carrying out the dismissals, and the proposed method of calculating redundancy payments. ACAS publishes a useful list of what reasonable disclosure looks like in practice, and tribunals treat withholding material as a serious failing.

Consultation must be undertaken with a view to reaching agreement, and the employer must consider counter representations and reply to them. There is no obligation to accept a counter proposal, but there is an obligation to engage with it. A paper exercise where the employer has already decided the outcome and the structure, headcount and site are fixed will be read as no consultation at all.

Individual redundancy consultation for fewer than 20 employees

Even where the collective threshold is not met, you are entitled to meaningful individual consultation before a redundancy dismissal. There is no fixed minimum period, but the dismissal must be fair within the meaning of section 98 of the Employment Rights Act 1996, and that includes the opportunity to discuss the proposal, to consider alternative roles, and to put forward answers to the business case.

ACAS guidance on handling redundancies, which the new code has reinforced, expects at least one meeting where you are told what is proposed, why you have been selected rather than a colleague, what alternative employment exists, and how to appeal. You are entitled to be accompanied at that meeting by a work colleague or a trade union representative, and you can ask for time off to get that advice.

If you are pregnant, on maternity leave, on adoption leave, on shared parental leave, or on neonatal care leave, you are also entitled to priority consideration for any suitable alternative vacancy under regulation 10 of the Maternity and Parental Leave Regulations 1999, and that obligation now extends in practice to a wider group of protected family leave. We covered the pregnancy and maternity priority rule in our October 2026 guide.

What happens if consultation is skipped or rushed

The headline remedy for failure to comply with the collective duty is a protective award of up to 90 days pay for each affected employee. The award is calculated as a gross week of pay, subject to the statutory cap on a weeks pay, which the government usually uprates in April each year. In 2026 the weekly cap sits at the level set from 6 April 2026, and you can check the current figure on the gov.uk redundancy page.

For individual failures to consult, the remedy is an uplift on the compensatory award for unfair dismissal, which the 2024 Code of Practice has encouraged tribunals to apply in a more structured way. There is no set multiplier, but an uplift of 25 to 50 per cent of the compensatory award is now common where the employer ran a sham process or provided no real opportunity to respond. The compensatory award itself is capped, and a separate unfair dismissal compensatory award cap has applied since the summer 2026 regulations, which we have written about in connection with fire and rehire cases.

You can also challenge the dismissal itself as automatically unfair if the reason or principal reason is connected to trade union membership or activities, whistleblowing, health and safety activity, or a number of other protected grounds. Redundancy used as a cover for a protected reason is not redundancy, and the compensation cap does not apply to those automatically unfair categories.

How to challenge a rushed redundancy process

If you think consultation has not happened, or has happened on paper only, start by asking, in writing, for the information that should have been disclosed under section 188. If the request is refused, or the response does not address the points, that is evidence in itself. A short, dated email to HR or your line manager, asking for the redundancy selection criteria, the pool for selection, the scores used, and any alternative roles considered, gives your adviser something concrete to work with later.

Acas early conciliation is the gateway to bringing a claim in the employment tribunal, and the time limit for an unfair dismissal claim is three months less one day from the effective date of termination, with the time limit for a whistleblowing claim running from the detriment or dismissal and the time limit for an unpaid wages claim running from when the wages should have been paid. You must notify Acas within the primary time limit, after which you have a calendar month to bring the claim. The protection available to you does not stop you from getting a new job while a claim is on foot, and settlement discussions can be run in parallel.

What to do in the meantime

Keep a contemporaneous note of every meeting, the dates, who was present, what was said, and what you were told. Save emails, meeting invites, selection matrices, and any notes you were given. Ask in writing for copies of any documents you are shown, because a failure to provide them later is a breach of the data protection rules and supports a credibility point for the employer. If you are a member of a union, speak to your rep before any individual meeting so that you can be accompanied and so that the collective angle is protected. If you are not in a union, you can still be accompanied by a colleague, and many people choose to take advice from a solicitor before the appeal stage. Do not sign a settlement agreement without taking legal advice, because the time limit for an unfair dismissal claim continues to run until it is dismissed by the employment judge.