Restructuring is a process. Get it wrong and it becomes a claim.

A redundancy dismissal is fair only if there is a genuine redundancy situation, the pool and selection criteria are defensible, consultation is real rather than presentational, and alternative employment has been considered properly. Employers rarely lose these claims on the commercial decision, which tribunals do not second-guess. They lose on the process that delivered it.

The exposure scales with the number of people affected. Collective consultation obligations bite at 20 or more proposed redundancies at one establishment within 90 days, with a protective award of up to 90 days' pay per affected employee where the obligation is missed. Twenty individual conversations handled loosely can therefore become a single very expensive claim.

What a specialist checks before you announce

Almost every winnable redundancy claim is won in the planning, not the hearing:

• Is this a genuine redundancy: closure, relocation, or a reduced requirement for work of a particular kind?
• Is the pool defensible, and can you explain why it was drawn where it was rather than wider or narrower?
• Are the selection criteria objective, capable of evidence, and free of anything that maps onto a protected characteristic?
• Does the timetable allow genuine individual consultation, with the outcome not already fixed?
• Does the headcount trigger collective consultation, and if so are representatives in place and the timetable long enough?
• Have suitable alternative vacancies been searched for across the whole business, including any trial periods?
• Are employees on maternity or family leave given the priority the law requires for suitable alternative roles?

Where restructures turn into claims

The most common failure is a consultation that was never capable of changing anything. Where the selection matrix is scored before the first meeting and the outcome letter is drafted in advance, employees notice, and so do tribunals. Consultation does not have to change the decision, but it has to be able to.

The second is scoring that cannot be evidenced. Criteria like "attitude" or "flexibility" are not unlawful in themselves, but if the scores exist only in a manager's head, they collapse under cross-examination, and any correlation with age, disability-related absence or part-time working turns an unfair dismissal claim into a discrimination one with no cap.

The third is treating a restructure as a way to remove a particular individual. If a role is retitled and refilled, or the pool is drawn around one person, the redundancy label will not hold, and what began as a process question becomes a credibility question about the business.

How MatchMySolicitor helps

We are a referral service, not a law firm. You tell us about the claim once, and we match it to a firm whose practice is genuinely respondent-side employment work rather than general litigation with an employment sideline.

Every firm on the panel is regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. Your details go to one matched firm, never several, and the first conversation is free with no obligation to instruct. Many panel firms offer fixed-fee packages for the response and early stages, and if you hold legal expenses insurance we can match you with firms that work with your policy.

Tell us about the situation in a two-minute form. No documents needed yet.

We match you with a respondent-side specialist, same day where a deadline is urgent.

The solicitor contacts you within 24 hours for a free initial assessment and your options.

1.Tell us about the situation in a two-minute form. No documents needed yet.

2.We match you with a respondent-side specialist, same day where a deadline is urgent.

3.The solicitor contacts you within 24 hours for a free initial assessment and your options.