If dozens of you are made redundant without consultation, you can all claim extra pay.

The situation

Thirty-three employees at a construction company, then trading as Octagon Developments Limited, were told on 19 December 2024 that they were being made redundant with immediate effect. Some heard it in person at the company's head office, others over Microsoft Teams. There was no recognised trade union at the company. It had never held the election for employee representatives that the law requires before mass redundancies. No consultation took place, collective or individual. The company was later renamed LDO Realisations Limited and went into administration.

What the tribunal found

LDO Realisations had a duty to consult under section 188 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992. The tribunal found it had not done so. The business had been losing money for a long period before the redundancies. That ruled out any argument that this was a sudden emergency. The tribunal found no mitigating circumstances at all, and applied the maximum available protective award: 90 days' pay, running from 19 December 2024. Because the company was insolvent and unlikely ever to pay, the tribunal dealt with the protective award and the question of who was entitled to it in a single hearing, rather than making people come back a second time. Of the 33 claimants, 15 had produced enough evidence of their own employment and dismissal dates to receive the award without any further conditions. The other 18 were found to qualify in principle, on exactly the same facts, but still need to show evidence of their own dismissal date before their award is confirmed.

If you were one of a large group of people let go on the same day, with no warning and no meeting beforehand, you are not dealing with something unusual or something you brought on yourself. A tribunal treats a mass redundancyA dismissal that occurs when your employer no longer needs the work you do, either because the business is closing, a workplace is closing, or the requirement for employees to carry out that kind of w... like this as a serious, recognisable failure, not a one-off misfortune.

The law requires any employer proposing to make 20 or more people redundant at one workplace within 90 days to consult first, either with a recognised trade union or with employee representatives elected specifically for that purpose. If your employer never even ran that election, that alone is enough for a tribunal to find against them. It can then award the maximum 90 days' extra pay rather than a reduced amount.

Being part of a large group bringing a claim together does not mean the tribunal treats your case as automatically proven because your colleagues' cases were. Even where dozens of you are joined together into one case for administrative convenience, each person still has to show they were actually employed and actually dismissed on the relevant date. Keep your dismissal letter, your payslips, and anything confirming your start date. If you were made redundant alongside a group of colleagues with no consultation beforehand, get advice on a protective award claim. Make sure you can back up your own dates with paperwork before the claim gets anywhere near a hearing.

A similar total failure to consult, with the same maximum award, is covered in our case study on an employer that skipped redundancy consultation altogether.