Your employer can change without you knowing, and that new employer still owes you.
“TUPEStands for Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment). If the business or work you are part of is sold or transferred to a new employer, TUPE means your existing terms and conditions transfer... transfer found; the transferee, not the insolvency fund, was ordered to pay £9,880.”
Being told you're redundant because your employer is insolvent doesn't always mean that's the real story. Your job might have already moved to a different, connected company without anyone telling you. When that happens, that new company carries the legal responsibility for what you're owed, including your 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... pay, notice pay, and holiday payThe pay you receive for the paid annual leave you're entitled to under UK law, worth at least 5.6 weeks a year for most workers. It's usually calculated from your normal pay, though the exact method d.... Find out who really runs your old job before you go anywhere near a government claims form.
- Check your payslips and any letters or emails you've been sent. A change of employer sometimes shows up there even when nobody mentions it to you directly.
- A business transfer counts in law even if you never knew about it or agreed to it. Your rights carry over with it, and someone on the other side now owes you for them.
- If a government insolvency scheme is who you're being pointed toward, get advice first. A still-solvent company might actually be the one who owes you that money.
The situation
A 15-year employee was told his employer was going into liquidation. He was being made redundant, they said, and would need to claim his redundancy pay and notice pay from the government's insolvency payments fund. Nobody mentioned that the business had already changed hands a month earlier, moving to a connected company run by the same family of directors. That company remained solvent throughout. His payslips never showed any change of employer.
What the tribunal found
The tribunal found that a TUPE transfer had genuinely taken place a month before the claimed redundancy date. Under the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 2006, that transfer moved the business, and everything the employer owed the people in it, from the original company to the connected, solvent one. That made the connected company legally responsible for the debt. The insolvency fund and the original employer were off the hook. The tribunal ordered the transferee to pay £9,880 in total. That works out to £6,330 in statutory redundancy pay, £3,228 in notice pay, and £322 in holiday pay.
Employers going into liquidation happens, and the government's insolvency scheme genuinely pays out in plenty of cases, so check before you assume it's the answer here too. As it was in this case, your job might have already been quietly moved to a different, still-solvent company before anyone told you, and that company is who actually owes you the money.
A transfer like this becomes legally real without a big announcement, a new contract, or your agreement. It can happen through a simple change of ownership or management. The transfer counts regardless of whether your employer tells you about it, even though telling you is something they're legally required to do. Your right to be paid by whoever now runs the business counts just as much. Look at your payslips, your contract, and anything in writing that names your employer, especially when you're being pointed toward a government scheme instead of the business itself.
If your employer says they're insolvent and tells you to claim elsewhere, get advice before you do anything. An adviser can check whether a transfer happened in your case. They can also tell you who you should actually be pursuing for what you're owed.
Smith v Brightdesk Ltd (in Creditors Voluntary Liquidation) and Others. Cases 6014871/2024 and 6019900/2024. Employment Tribunal. 27 August 2025.