FAQs

You are entitled to take up to 52 weeks’ maternity leave.

Statutory redundancy pay is based on your gross (before tax) earnings and is only payable if at the time of your redundancy, you had served two years’ continuous employment with the employer.

For each full year you've worked for your employer, depending on your age at that time, you get:

• Age 18 to 22 - half a week's pay
• Age 22 to 40 - 1 week's pay
• Age 41 and older - 1.5 weeks' pay

Therefore, if you had seven years’ service and were aged 45 at the time of your redundancy, you would get 1.5 weeks’ pay for the service where you were 41 or older, and 1 week’s pay for the service under 41.

Statutory Redundancy pay is limited to a weekly cap set each year. Further, you can only get redundancy pay for a maximum of the last 20 years’ of service and any service length over this will not count.

Some employers operate enhanced redundancy schemes and the above is the statutory minimum scheme.

Normally where an employee is dismissed for whatever reason, they will have a right to raise an internal appeal. This will normally involve a senior manager reviewing the dismissal decision and deciding whether the dismissal should be upheld. If the manager dealing with the appeal decides that the dismissal should be overturned, the manager can reinstate the employee to their original role. The employee will then be entitled to payment for any lost wages between their dismissal and reinstatement.

Also, in an unfair dismissal claim, the Employment Tribunal has the power to order the reinstatement or reengagement by the employer of the employee, although in practice such measures are rare due to the deteriorated relationship by that stage between the employer and the employee.

An unfair dismissal can occur where an employee is dismissed and the employer either has no fair reason to dismiss, follows an unfair procedure when dismissing an employee, or where the decision is overly harsh and is not a reasonable response by the employer.

Normally, an employee needs two years’ service to bring a claim for unfair dismissal, although there are some limited reasons which do not require minimum service such as dismissals connected to whistleblowing, pregnancy or asserting statutory rights.

A disciplinary procedure is normally a written procedure which sets out how an employer will deal with issues of employee misconduct or poor performance. An employer should state in writing what their procedures are and what behaviours would result in disciplinary action.

A constructive dismissal arises where an employee has resigned due to the actions of the employer, which normally must be very serious breaches of the employee’s contract. In the majority of cases, the breach alleged is that the employer has acted in such a way as to destroy the relationship of trust between it and the employee.

In order to prove constructive dismissal, the employee must be able to show that the employer has breached a fundamental term of the contract. This can sometimes relate to an express term, such as pay, but normally it relates to the creation of a hostile working environment. Constructive dismissal claims could arise from bullying or harassment, unreasonable changes to your job such as longer/reduced hours or a demotion, withheld wages, contractual benefits being taken away and insufficient support being provided. The employee must “accept” the employer’s breach by resigning and must not delay in doing so or act in a manner consistent with “waiving” the employer’s breach e.g. by continuing in the employment without objection.

No. In order to make a claim for constructive dismissal, you must have resigned from the job.