Focus on Redundancy

With budgetary concerns always prevalent, schools are needing to review their staffing structures on a continuous basis to ensure efficiency and the most effective environment for delivering the curriculum and the learning of students. Where such reviews highlight a need for restructuring or redundancy, it’s a difficult decision to have to implement and takes time.

When should we start planning for implementation from September 2024?

If you have not started already, the answer is now! It can take two terms to complete a redundancy or restructuring exercise from planning to issuing any notices of redundancy.

The key to ensuring your new structure is effective from September 2024 is to begin planning now. Time spent now setting out in detail the reasons and business case for your proposals, the proposed structure (including considering role profiles) and the consultation timescale is essential and will be invaluable. It will mean you can begin your consultation process early in the Spring Term, and effect any necessary redundancies, and carry out any appeals during the Summer term. This is particularly relevant to teachers where any notice of redundancy must effectively be given by the Summer Half Term.

What’s the process?

You will need to follow your managing change/redundancy procedures if you have them.

You will no doubt want to consider alternatives to redundancy, such as recruitment freezes, non-renewal of fixed term contracts and possibly a voluntary redundancy scheme. However, once you have concluded that redundancies are still necessary, then, broadly, for any redundancy dismissal to be fair, you must show that:

• redundancy was the real reason for the dismissal – with the key to this being that you should set out clearly the business case for your proposals; and
• you acted reasonably in the process. This includes:
  • following a fair consultation process with both the Unions and employees about your proposals prior to making any final decision;
  • having a fair and objective selection process (in terms of careful consideration of the pool for selection and selection criteria used); and
  • looking for alternative employment (often this will be new roles in a new structure).

Schools always consult with Unions regardless of the number of proposed redundancies, but bear in mind that more formal statutory collective consultation with Unions, and notification to the Secretary of State, may also be required if you are planning to make 20 or more employees redundant at one establishment in a 90 day period. The numbers will usually include counting those people whose jobs are disappearing in the old structure, regardless of whether you believe they are likely to get a different job in the new structure.

It is also worth noting that if you want to reorganise work at the school, but are not planning redundancies – for example, you have a need to change terms and conditions – then consultation with Unions and staff to reach agreement would also apply. However, depending on the numbers of staff involved, a need for statutory collective consultation (as above) may be triggered if you propose to dismiss and re-engage on the new terms and conditions, due to a failure to reach agreement. Advice should be sought on this.

Affected staff will usually be present during some or all of the collective consultation process. However, once collective consultation on the business case has concluded, and implementation begins, it is vital that staff are also consulted with individually about their individual selection and ways to avoid their redundancy, such as alternative employment. This is crucial to the fairness of any dismissal.

The implementation stage is resource hungry. So on a practical level, and to keep to the timetable, you will need to ensure you have enough managers available to undertake selection, attend individual consultation meetings, carry out assessments and interviews for new roles (where relevant), and attend any dismissal and appeal hearings. All managers involved in the process will need to understand their roles and responsibilities. You will also need to check your procedures and scheme of delegation to determine who has authority to dismiss in these circumstances – for example, it may be the CEO, governors, or trustees - and you will need to line them up for this.

How can we help you?

Once you are clear on your new structure, and the reasons for it, we can work with you to put it in a format required for collective consultation, covering your business case, details of affected staff, and help with selection. We can also prepare a realistic timeline for you of the length of time needed to cover consultation and implementation of any decisions and can provide ongoing advice and support throughout the process to hopefully minimise the risk of any legal claims.