Redundancy doesn’t let your employer skip considering junior roles for you.

The situation

An employee spent five years with a building services company, moving from an operations manager role into a senior position running a small subsidiary. When the subsidiary could no longer sustain itself financially, he was told his role was being made redundant. His employer ran a genuine consultationA process your employer is required to carry out before making significant decisions that affect you, most commonly redundancy. It must be genuine, meaning your employer must listen and consider what ..., discussed alternatives with him, and there was no equivalent role left elsewhere for him to move into. But while all of that was happening, the wider company was quietly preparing to advertise a more junior engineering role that he was well qualified to do. He was never told about it.

What the tribunal found

The tribunal found the 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... itself was genuine and the consultation process was largely fair. But the dismissal was still unfair. Given the employer's size and resources, it had a duty to actively consider whether a more junior role elsewhere in the group could be offered before dismissing him, even one he had not asked about, and even though it had not been advertised yet. A vacancy for a role well within his skill set was posted just weeks after his dismissal. The tribunal found the employer should have raised it with him. Because that failure went to the heart of the process, his unfair dismissal claim succeeded under s.98(4) ERA 1996, even though his separate claims for wrongful dismissalA breach of contract claim, usually about not being given the correct notice or notice pay, decided under ordinary contract law rather than employment rights legislation. It is different from unfair d... and missing written terms did not.

If you're facing redundancy, your employer's duty doesn't stop at looking for a role at your own level. It extends to genuinely considering anything suitable across the wider organisation, including more junior positions, even if you never raised it yourself and even if nothing had been advertised yet at the point you were told your job was going. Staying silent about wanting a more junior role does not release your employer from the duty to mention one that exists.

This matters most if your redundancy moves quickly, or if you're the only person in your part of the business, because there is often no formal process forcing anyone to look wider than your immediate role. Ask directly, in writing, whether any other roles are being planned or recruited for across the organisation, not just ones matching your current level. If your redundancy went ahead without that happening, and you later discover a suitable role appeared around the same time, that can be grounds for an unfair dismissal claim, even where everything else about the process looked reasonable. Get advice quickly if you think this applies to you, because the time limitThe deadline by which you must submit a claim to an employment tribunal. For most claims the limit is three months less one day from the act you are complaining about, and it is strictly enforced. Mis... for bringing a claim is short.