Redundancy consultation

The process an employer must follow before making redundancies — and, once 20 or more are proposed at one establishment, a separate collective duty that now carries a much larger penalty for getting wrong.

When does collective redundancy consultation have to happen?

Where an employer proposes to dismiss 20 or more employees as redundant at one establishment within a period of 90 days or less, section 188 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 requires consultation to start in good time before the first dismissal takes effect — at least 45 days beforehand where 100 or more redundancies are proposed, and at least 30 days beforehand for 20 to 99.

What if fewer than 20 redundancies are proposed?

The collective consultation duty under section 188 does not apply below that threshold. Individual consultation with each affected employee may still be required as part of a fair redundancy process, but it is a separate obligation from collective consultation and is assessed differently by a tribunal.

What happens if an employer skips or rushes collective consultation?

Employee representatives, or in limited circumstances an individual employee, can bring a complaint to the employment tribunal, which can make a protective award — compensation for the consultation failure, assessed by how serious the failure was, up to a maximum of 180 days' pay per affected employee.

Is the 180-day protective award maximum new?

Yes. The cap was 90 days' pay for many years, and increased to 180 days with effect from 6 April 2026, when the Employment Rights Act 2025 substituted "180" for "90" in section 189(4) of the 1992 Act. A protective award complaint about a failure to consult before that date is assessed against the earlier 90-day maximum.

How long do affected employees have to bring a protective award claim?

Since 1 October 2026, the general deadline is six months from the date the last of the relevant dismissals takes effect, extended from the previous three months by the Employment Rights Act 2025. The six-month deadline applies where that date falls on or after 1 October 2026; where the last dismissal took effect before that date, the earlier three-month deadline applies instead. A tribunal can extend the deadline where it was not reasonably practicable to claim in time.

Does an employer also have to notify a government body about collective redundancies?

Yes. Alongside the consultation duty, an employer proposing 20 or more redundancies at one establishment must notify the Redundancy Payments Service using form HR1, within the same 30 or 45-day lead-in period that applies to consultation itself.

Two different consultation duties, often confused

Every redundancy, whatever the size, should generally involve some individual consultation with the employee affected — discussing the reason for the proposed redundancy, exploring alternatives, and giving the employee a genuine chance to respond before a final decision is made. This individual duty is assessed as part of whether the dismissal was fair overall, under the ordinary unfair dismissal framework.

A separate, additional duty arises once an employer proposes to dismiss 20 or more employees as redundant at one establishment within a period of 90 days or less. Section 188 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 then requires the employer to consult collectively with recognised trade unions or elected employee representatives, in good time before any dismissal takes effect — on top of, not instead of, individual consultation with each employee.

The minimum lead-in times

What changed on 6 April 2026 and 1 October 2026

Two linked reforms under the Employment Rights Act 2025 significantly raised the stakes for getting collective consultation wrong. From 6 April 2026, section 30 of the Act doubled the maximum protective award a tribunal can order under section 189, from 90 days' pay per affected employee to 180 days' pay — a complete failure to consult can now cost an employer roughly six months' pay per employee, rather than three. Then, from 1 October 2026, the deadline for bringing most tribunal claims, including a protective award complaint, doubled from three months to six months, under a separate set of amendments made by the same Act. The six-month deadline applies where the last relevant dismissal takes effect on or after 1 October 2026; the previous three-month deadline still applies where it took effect before that date.

An employer proposes to make 35 employees redundant at one site in December 2026, giving staff only two weeks' notice with no engagement with elected representatives at all, despite the 30-day minimum lead-in that applied.

Proposed redundancies

35 — above the 20-employee threshold

Required minimum consultation period

Consultation actually given

14 days, no representatives

Likely protective award (post-6 April 2026)

Up to 180 days' pay per employee

Because the consultation fell well short of the 30-day minimum and representatives were never involved, a tribunal would likely treat this as a serious failure. Because the dismissals take effect after 6 April 2026, the maximum available is 180 days' pay per affected employee, not the earlier 90-day cap — and because the last dismissal falls after 1 October 2026, any claim has a six-month deadline from that date rather than three months.

Statutory redundancy pay

Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992, section 188

Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992, section 189

Employment Rights Act 2025, section 30

Redundancy Consultation — Employment Tribunal Glossary

When collective redundancy consultation is required, the 30 and 45-day lead-in periods, and the 2026 changes to the protective award cap and claim deadline.