Redundancy

Redundancy is when a person is dismissed because they are no longer needed by the business. Generally, this happens for one of three reasons:

Complete cessation of your business.
The shutting down of your employees place of work.
Reduction in the need for the type of work or number of workers needed to do your employees job.

According to redundancy law, a redundancy may count as unfair dismissal if unreasonable criteria have been used to select the individual being made redundant. For the redundancy to be fair, you must have created a justifiable set of criteria which are used to select the employee or employees to be made redundant (e.g. length of service, skills, qualifications or disciplinary proceedings), and you must then apply these criteria rigorously and without bias to all the employees being considered for redundancy.

Your business must also show that you have chosen the correct pool of employees to select from for redundancy and that you have consulted properly with the employees concerned and carefully considered whether any alternative employment can be offered to redundant employees.

If you can be shown to have selected an employee for redundancy using irrelevant or unjustifiable criteria (for example for reasons relating to age, sex, race or disability), then you would be regarded by an Employment Tribunal as not having carried out the selection process in a fair manner, and there is every likelihood that the redundancy would be classed as unfair dismissal.