Redundancy and family leave: your right to be offered a suitable role first

If your role is being made redundant while you’re on maternity, adoption, shared parental, neonatal care, or bereaved partner’s paternity leave, the law gives you something stronger than the usual 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... process. You get first refusal on any genuinely suitable alternative role, ahead of anyone else at risk.

The right, in one sentence

If your job disappears in a redundancy while you’re covered by one of these leave types, your employer must offer you any suitable alternative vacancyA 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,..., on a new contract starting the moment your old one ends, before considering anyone else for it. Not offering it when one exists makes your dismissal automatically unfair.

Which leave types this covers

This isn’t a maternity-only right any more. The same protection now runs across six situations, each with its own legal source:

• Pregnancy and maternity leave (Regulation 10, Maternity and Parental Leave etc. Regulations 1999).
• Adoption leave (same regulation, same mechanics).
• Shared parental leave (regulation 39, Shared Parental Leave Regulations 2014), once you’ve taken at least 6 consecutive weeks of it.
• Neonatal care leave (regulation 14, Neonatal Care Leave and Miscellaneous Amendments Regulations 2025), also once 6+ consecutive weeks have been taken. This continues under the maternity or adoption rules if you’re taking it alongside either of those.
• Bereaved partner’s paternity leave (regulation 14, Bereaved Partner’s Paternity Leave Regulations 2026), a brand-new, day-one right (no minimum service needed) to up to 52 weeks’ unpaid leave if a child’s mother or primary adopter dies within the child’s first year. The same 6-week trigger and priority right apply here too.

How long the protection lasts

The window is 18 months, but what it’s measured from depends on your situation: from the expected week of childbirth (or the actual birth date, if you told your employer), from the date of placement for adoption, or from the equivalent trigger pointA trigger point is a set number of sickness absences or days off that automatically starts your employer's formal attendance management process, such as a review meeting or a warning. If you're disabl... for the other leave types.

If you have a miscarriage before 24 weeks and don’t otherwise qualify for statutory maternity leave, you’re still protected for two weeks after the pregnancy ends, provided you told your employer in time.

What actually counts as a “vacancy”

This is where redundancies on family leave most often go wrong, in both directions.

If your employer is genuinely reducing the number of roles like yours, for example 21 team leader posts cut down to 16, the remaining, still-filled roles are not “vacancies” for this purpose. The law doesn’t require your employer to bump a higher-scoring colleague out of their job to make room for you. That’s a real limit on the right, not a loophole employers invented. One EAT case confirms exactly this: reducing 21 team leader posts to 16 didn’t create a vacancy for an employee on maternity leave, even though she scored lower than colleagues who kept their jobs.

If your employer merges two or more roles into one new position instead, that’s different. The new role is a genuine vacancy, and you’re entitled to it ahead of anyone else, even a colleague who scored higher than you. The distinction is whether a new role has been created, not whether you’d have preferred one of the existing ones.

It’s an absolute right, not a competition

Where a genuine suitable vacancy exists, you don’t have to be the best candidate for it, and your employer can’t run a competitive interview process to decide whether you get it. If it’s suitable, it’s yours. A tribunal will look at whether the role was genuinely suitable for you, not at how you’d have ranked against other candidates. A separate case makes the point clearly: when two roles were merged into one and the employer picked the “better qualified” colleague instead, the EATStands for Employment Appeal Tribunal. It hears appeals from employment tribunal decisions on points of law, not on the facts. It is not a way of simply asking for a second opinion on the outcome. held the employee on maternity leave had an absolute right to the merged role regardless.

This is a different question from discrimination

Being denied a suitable alternative vacancy doesn’t automatically prove pregnancy or maternity discrimination. They’re separate legal questions: this priority right requires more favourable treatment during the protected periodThe window during which you have the priority right to be offered a suitable alternative vacancy if you're made redundant, typically 18 months from the expected week of childbirth, the actual birth da..., while a discrimination claim under the Equality Act asks whether you were treated unfavourably at all. You can lose on one and still have a case on the other, so don’t assume a failed discrimination argument rules out this claim, or the reverse.

What’s changing, not yet in force

Use our redundancy and family leave checklist to check whether your employer has actually offered you what the law requires.

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If you’re facing redundancy while on or returning from family leave and aren’t sure whether you’ve been offered everything you’re entitled to, book a call to talk through your situation.