A suitable alternative vacancy is a genuinely comparable role your employer must offer you before making you redundant, if one exists. If you’re on maternity, adoption, shared parental, neonatal care, or bereaved partner’s paternity leave, this becomes an absolute priority right under Regulation 10 of the Maternity and Parental Leave etc. Regulations 1999 (and its equivalents): you must be offered the role ahead of anyone else, with no competitive process. Outside that protected period, if you unreasonably refuse a suitable role you can lose your right to statutory redundancy pay, though a four-week trial period doesn’t affect that right if the role turns out not to work.
If your employer offers you a genuinely comparable role elsewhere in the business instead of making you redundant, and you turn it down without good reason, you can lose your statutory 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. If you're on maternity leave when a role is merged or newly created during a restructure, you're entitled to it ahead of anyone else, even a colleague who scored higher in a selection process.