Predetermination in Redundancy
Hi All,
I was made redundant following individual consultation that started in December 25, ended in January 26.
The team structure at the time was one Trainee role, and two assistants (of which I was one, seconded into a project role for a year or so at the time consultation started). The company made the decision that it would eliminate two assistant roles, creating a new more qualified Senior position. The trainee role has had the same individual in post for 3+ years, and there is no real plan or structure as to how this is a trainee role in any way, beyond just being less senior/lower pay.
Established facts:
My substantive post was covered initially by a FTC agency placement, they did not renew their contract one year in for "cost saving reasons" and assigned all work to other permanent staff, including a newly created role elsewhere in the department.
The trainee and assistant roles all undertake near identical work. There is functionally no difference in what each does on a month to month basis. I had slightly heightened responsibilities due to my slightly better technical knowledge of some internal systems that the other roles did not possess.
Company confirmed in writing that it is in no way tied to performance.
The trainee had recently had a child.
Evidence/foul play
While the identity of the source is redacted in line with SAR rules, I firmly believe that it was a manager within my department that sent a teams message to another one "based on the conversation I just had with *me*. He needs to go". I was asked for my job description a day or so later by my manager at the time. Sent in Apr 25.
They claim that the Trainee role was never included because the company is committed to developing their employees, though initially claimed it was because they were paid less (£1k less than my gross pay).
My manager in August 2025 declined to allow me time off to study (which all other staff who were studying for this certification were allowed) because "I might leave". They claimed this was due to a statement I made about being unhappy about other factors of my role/wider team.
My extremely loose lipped line manager (who had been involved in planning the restructure) made the following claims to several colleagues in a meeting once the redundancy consultation started (within a week of it):
- The director wanted to promote the trainee to assistant, but couldn't because then they would be involved in the redundancy process. (Yes this was directly said).
- A personal friend of theirs would be joining the team as the Senior (later clarified to be an initial 6 month contract).
- they had planned to start this in the summer of 2025 but due to their hospitalisation they had to delay.
I'm not going to include the various procedural issues that happened during the redundancy consultation itself, but if relevant to the following questions I am happy to elaborate:
If you were told that your company had overseen a redundancy with these circumstances, what does the process internally look like? What do internal repercussions generally look like?
Do they generally start discussing settlement vs tribunal process early on? From my understanding it is quite arduous and expensive on the employers side. Where evidence is quite damning (if the above does meet that bar) do they tend to be much more pragmatic even if the schedule of loss is strictly only a few thousand?
I do believe that the trainees recent parentage formed a part of the reasons for the decisions to artificially exclude them from pool selection. As far as I can tell, there is no exact precedent for using that as a discriminating factor that a tribunal has ruled on, and the bar to meet for me is to prove that based on my protected characteristics it is reasonable to assume I am less likely/unable to have that. If I am wrong here, I am happy to be corrected.
Based on the above, would this raise procedural concerns from a process design perspective? I did go through the internal appeal process, but it very much felt like a rubber stamp exercise where the most senior company HR person was trying to validate everything rather than actually be objective.
Thanks all, appreciate any insight you may have :)