Pregnant or on mat leave and facing redundancy? The law now tilts firmly in your favour.

Redundancy while pregnant or on maternity leave: your 2026 rights

Updated 19 October 2026

Since the original Section 106 Employment Rights Act 1996 was tightened, employees who are pregnant or on maternity leave have had a special status in any redundancy exercise. In October 2026, with redundancy volumes still running above pre-2024 levels in the retail, hospitality and professional services sectors, that status is doing more work than ever. The law gives you three concrete rights: first, your employer must offer you a suitable alternative role where one exists before they offer it to anyone else; second, the trial period in that new role is fixed and limited, so you cannot be left in limbo; third, you cannot be selected for redundancy because you are pregnant, on maternity leave, or because you took leave earlier in the same pregnancy. This guide walks through what those rights mean on the ground, the questions to ask your employer, and what to do if you think they are being sidestepped. It is written from the employee side, in the order you actually need it when a redundancy is announced.

What counts as being pregnant or on maternity leave for redundancy protection

You are protected for the whole of your pregnancy from conception, the whole of your ordinary maternity leave, the whole of your additional maternity leave, and for a period of 18 months after the birth. The 18-month period was extended by the Protection from Redundancy (Pregnancy and Family Leave) Act 2023 and now runs from the first day of the pregnancy rather than from the date the child is born, which matters if your employer tries to argue the clock only started later.

You are also protected during shared parental leave if you have taken it, during adoption leave, and during a period of neonatal care leave taken in respect of the same child. Surrogates who have given birth are protected as employees; intended parents in a surrogacy arrangement have separate rights and this guide is not written for them.

If you are unsure whether you are in scope, ask yourself three questions. Am I, or have I recently been, pregnant, on maternity leave, on adoption leave, or on shared parental leave linked to this child? If yes, the priority applies. The second question is how long since the birth: if it is under 18 months, the priority still applies even if you returned to work months ago. The third question is whether the role at risk is genuinely redundant, or whether the employer is reshuffling to push you out. If reshuffling is the real story, you may have a discrimination claim that sits alongside the redundancy protection.

The right to a suitable alternative vacancy

The headline right is in section 106 of the Employment Rights Act 1996 as amended. Where an employee is at risk of redundancy and is pregnant or on maternity leave, the employer must offer them any suitable alternative vacancy that exists, before offering it to anyone else in the pool, regardless of who is more senior or has more service.

The phrase “suitable alternative” is doing a lot of work. A role is suitable if the work, terms, location, hours and status are broadly comparable to what you do now. A role is not suitable if it pays materially less, requires a longer commute, drops you down a grade, or asks you to do work outside your competence. If the only vacancy on the table is a lower-paid role, an unsuitable role, or one you cannot physically get to, your employer is not entitled to treat that as the discharge of their duty. They must keep looking or, in some cases, find you a role outside the business.

The right to a suitable alternative only applies where the employer is making you redundant. It does not apply if you are dismissed for misconduct, capability unrelated to pregnancy, or some other substantial reason unconnected with the pregnancy. It also does not apply if you are genuinely the only person who can do a job and the role is not being closed at all, although those situations are narrower than employers like to suggest.

The priority applies to vacancies that arise during the protected period. It does not require the employer to create a role that did not otherwise exist. If you want to understand more about how employers decide who is in the pool, our guide to selection criteria is a useful companion, and the gov.uk redundancy page sets out the basic minimum consultation that should be happening.

What happens if you are offered a role and want to try it

If you are offered a suitable alternative, you do not have to take it on trust. You can ask for a four-week trial period that starts on the date the new role begins. The four weeks can be extended by written agreement for up to a further four weeks where retraining is genuinely needed, and that agreement has to be in place before the original four weeks expires, not after.

During the trial period, you keep your redundancy terms. If you are dismissed at the end of the trial because the role is not suitable after all, your redundancy payment is calculated as if you had been made redundant on the original date the role became redundant, so you do not lose out because of the trial. That date matters because the longer the consultation drags on, the larger the payment is meant to get.

If you turn down a role that is genuinely suitable, you lose the right to a redundancy payment. The test of suitability is partly objective and partly subjective, and the subjective element is the more important of the two. If the role would require a commute of two hours each way, that is unlikely to be suitable for most people, even if it pays the same. If the role requires night shifts when you have caring responsibilities, that is unlikely to be suitable either, even if your employer thinks it is. The employer has to show that the role is suitable in your particular circumstances, not in the abstract.

During a trial, you can also ask what the long-term prospects are in the new role. Will the role be expanded or reduced? Is the new team stable? Will there be a further redundancy exercise in the next six months? None of those questions commits you to anything, and the answers are useful in deciding whether to stay.

Selection, pooling, and why pregnancy cannot count against you

In a redundancy exercise, your employer has to draw up a pool of people doing broadly similar work and apply fair selection criteria to it. Selection criteria have to be objective, measurable, and applied consistently. Length of service, disciplinary record, attendance, performance, skills, and flexibility are common criteria. Pregnancy, maternity leave, the fact that you have just returned from leave, or anything that flows from those facts, are not legitimate criteria. Using them is direct sex discrimination.

Common tricks that come up in practice include marking you down on attendance because you were on leave, marking you down on flexibility because you have caring responsibilities, or selecting you because your role is easier to fold into another team because the person covering you during leave has been kept on. None of these stand up. The Equality and Human Rights Commission guidance for employers is clear that the period of leave has to be neutral, and any criterion that disadvantages people who take leave is presumptively discriminatory.

If you are the only person in the pool because the role is being closed, your employer still has to consult, still has to look for suitable alternatives, and still has to follow a fair process. Being a singleton does not mean the duty disappears, and a one-person pool is a common setting for a discrimination claim to succeed.

Consultation, time limits, and what to do if you miss the window

You must be consulted individually once a redundancy is proposed, and the consultation has to happen before a final decision is made. For 20 or more redundancies at one establishment, the collective consultation rules kick in and the employer has to consult for at least 30 days before any dismissals. For fewer than 20, the duty is shorter but no less real, and a failure to consult in any meaningful way is one of the quickest ways for a tribunal to find the dismissal unfair.

Time limits for bringing a claim are short. Most unfair dismissal claims have to be lodged within three months of the effective date of termination, which we cover in our guide to the unfair dismissal time limit in 2026. Pregnancy and maternity discrimination claims under the Equality Act 2010 have a longer three-month window from the act complained of, but in practice the sooner you act the better, and ACAS Early Conciliation can extend the deadline while it is in progress.

If you think the deadline has already gone, do not assume you are out of time. ACAS can extend the deadline, the tribunal has a discretion to extend in discrimination claims where it is just and equitable to do so, and there is a separate claim for failure to inform and consult under the TUPE rules if the redundancy follows a transfer, which we cover in our guide to TUPE time limits. The test is not whether you were a day late, the test is whether you acted promptly once you knew.

Redundancy pay, notice, and what you should actually receive

Statutory redundancy pay is calculated using a formula based on age, length of continuous service, and weekly pay, capped at a maximum amount that the government reviews each year. The cap for the 2026-27 tax year has been confirmed and the maximum number of years counted is 20. Your employer can offer a contractual redundancy scheme, but it cannot pay you less than the statutory minimum, and the contractual scheme usually improves on the statutory floor.

You are also entitled to notice or pay in lieu of notice, whichever is longer of your contractual or statutory notice period. Statutory notice is one week for each year of service up to a maximum of 12 weeks. Many employers use payment in lieu of notice, in which case the PILON has to be taxed in the year it is paid and is subject to income tax and National Insurance. Your notice period starts to run on the date the employer gives you written notice, and that date also fixes the date of dismissal for redundancy pay purposes.

Your employer must give you a written statement of the redundancy payment and the calculation. They must also give you a written statement of the reasons for dismissal if you have two years' service and ask for it, which we cover in our guide to written reasons for dismissal. A final payslip should be issued on or before the last day of employment, and accrued but untaken holiday should be paid out at the higher of normal or average weekly pay.

What to do in the meantime

If a redundancy is on the cards and you are pregnant or on maternity leave, do five things this week. First, ask for a written copy of the selection criteria, the pool, and the scoring matrix, and the dates the scoring was applied. Second, ask for a list of all suitable alternative vacancies that exist anywhere in the organisation, not just in your team. Third, ask whether section 106 has been considered and on what date, in writing, because the answer is evidence if it goes to tribunal. Fourth, raise an internal grievance if the process appears discriminatory, because that often pauses the redundancy and creates a paper trail the tribunal will want to see. Fifth, contact ACAS on 0300 123 1100 to start Early Conciliation, which protects the deadline while you try to settle.

Keep copies of every email, letter, and meeting note. Ask for meeting notes in writing if you are not given them. Take a colleague or trade union rep into any meeting if you can. The combination of a paper trail, a prompt grievance, and an early conciliation call is what wins these claims, not the legal argument alone, and the steps above give you all three.