{"id":5645,"date":"2024-03-26T10:30:58","date_gmt":"2024-03-26T10:30:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/?p=5645"},"modified":"2024-03-26T10:31:00","modified_gmt":"2024-03-26T10:31:00","slug":"redundancy-changes-for-new-parents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/redundancy-changes-for-new-parents\/","title":{"rendered":"Redundancy changes for new parents"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The law surrounding redundancy for new parents is set to change from 6 April.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>This will offer enhanced protection from redundancy for those who are pregnant, on shared parental leave, or taking time off for adoption.<\/p>\n<p>If you need to make redundancies to cut costs and restructure your business, then you must be aware of the impact these changes could have on your process.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Current laws<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Currently, a \u2018protected period\u2019 is in place for people taking maternity, adoption, and shared parental leave. This will remain the case until 5 April 2024.<\/p>\n<p>If an employee who is taking these types of family leave is selected for redundancy, you must give them priority in offering alternative employment over other at-risk employees. This alternative employment should be:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Suitable and appropriate<\/li>\n<li>Not have terms that are significantly worse than their current role.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If this is available and not offered with priority to the employee who is in a \u2018protected period\u2019, the dismissal is automatically classed as unfair.<\/p>\n<p>You must follow this priority order even if there are candidates you believe to be more suitable for the alternative job role.<\/p>\n<p>However, suppose those employees who have priority do not take the job role offered, or you have multiple positions available.<\/p>\n<p>In that case, you can offer this alternative employment to other staff once agreements have been made.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Updated regulations<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>From April 6, these regulations will include pregnant employees from the moment they notify their employer.<\/p>\n<p>The period of protection for those taking maternity, shared parental leave, or adoption leave is also set to be expanded. From 6 April, they will be protected for 18 months following the expected birth or placement of the child that the leave relates to.<\/p>\n<p>It should also be noted that at least six weeks of shared parental leave must be taken for this extension to apply.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Making redundancies moving forward<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>If you are making redundancies, you must ensure that the correct priorities are given where alternative employment is available.<\/p>\n<p>Those who are responsible for your business\u2019s redundancy consultation must be aware of who has returned from adoption, shared parental leave, and maternity leave and when it was taken.<\/p>\n<p>They will also need to know if there are any pregnant members of staff in the redundancy pool.<\/p>\n<p>Once an agreement has been reached with the prioritised staff members, you should offer any remaining alternative job roles to other members of staff.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Statutory redundancy pay<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>You also need to ensure that any employees who are not offered alternative job roles are properly compensated with redundancy payments.<\/p>\n<p>These payouts must be given to anyone with at least two years of service.<\/p>\n<p>Under Government regulations, you must pay an employee:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Half a week\u2019s pay for each full year they were under 22<\/li>\n<li>One week\u2019s pay for each full year they were over 22<\/li>\n<li>One and a half week\u2019s pay for each full year they were over 41<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>With the length of service capped at 20 years.<\/p>\n<p>If employees are offered suitable job roles and do not choose to take them for no valid reason, then they are not entitled to statutory redundancy pay.<\/p>\n<p><strong>For advice on restructuring your business, cutting costs, or making redundancies, get in touch with our team today.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The law surrounding redundancy for new parents is set to change from 6 April.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5648,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,125,30,56,31,46,88,120,139],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5645"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5645"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5645\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5646,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5645\/revisions\/5646"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}