Can Redundancy Be Unfair Dismissal? A Full Guide
Qualifying service periods referenced on this page are correct as of the publication date. Please note that these rules are subject to change under upcoming employment law reforms, such as the Employment Rights Bill (expected to take effect around autumn 2026) — always check GOV.UK or consult a professional for the most current position.
Introduction
Yes — redundancy can absolutely amount to unfair dismissal, and it’s one of the more common situations where employees end up questioning whether their dismissal was actually lawful. Redundancy is recognised in law as a potentially fair reason to dismiss someone, but “potentially fair” is doing a lot of work in that sentence. A dismissal can be redundancy in name, and still be unfair dismissal in substance, depending on how the employer went about it.
This guide covers the situations where unfair dismissal during redundancy typically arises — from flawed selection processes through to redundancy being used as a pretext for something else entirely — and what your options are if you think it’s happened to you.
Table of Contents
- Redundancy Is a Potentially Fair Reason — But Not Automatically Fair
- When Does Unfair Dismissal During Redundancy Happen?
- “Sham” Redundancy: When the Real Reason Isn’t Redundancy at All
- Automatic Unfair Dismissal in a Redundancy Situation
- Bumping: An Overlooked Alternative to Redundancy
- Do You Need Two Years’ Service to Claim?
- What Can You Do If You Think Your Redundancy Was Unfair?
- Contact Us for Expert Employment Law Advice
- Final Thoughts
- Frequently Asked Questions
Redundancy Is a Potentially Fair Reason — But Not Automatically Fair
Under UK law, an employer doesn’t need your consent to make your role redundant, and a genuine reduction in the need for a particular kind of work is a legitimate business reason for dismissal. What the law does require is that the employer act reasonably in how it carries that dismissal out — and this is where a redundancy that starts out entirely genuine can still end up being an unfair dismissal.
The distinction matters because employees sometimes assume that because redundancy itself is lawful, nothing about the process can be successfully challenged. That’s not the case. The underlying redundancy situation being genuine is only the starting point for a tribunal — not the end of the analysis.
When Does Unfair Dismissal During Redundancy Happen?
Most unfair dismissal during redundancy claims come down to one of three process failures.
A flawed selection process. Where more than one employee could potentially be made redundant, the employer needs a fair and objectively applied way of deciding who’s selected — commonly a scoring matrix covering things like performance, skills, attendance, and disciplinary record. Selection becomes unfair where the criteria themselves are vague or subjective, where they’re applied inconsistently between employees, or where the “pool” of employees considered for selection is drawn too narrowly to begin with — for example, selecting only one person for a role that several employees genuinely also carry out.
Inadequate consultation. Employers are expected to consult meaningfully with affected employees before a final decision is made — not simply inform them of a decision that’s already been taken. A tribunal will look closely at whether consultation happened early enough to genuinely influence the outcome, whether the employee was given a real opportunity to suggest alternatives or challenge their selection, and whether the employer actually considered what was raised.
No genuine search for suitable alternative employment. Employers are expected to look for a suitable alternative role within the organisation before dismissing someone for redundancy, where one exists. Failing to identify or offer a genuinely suitable vacancy — or failing to properly explain why an available role wasn’t offered — is one of the more common reasons an otherwise genuine redundancy is found to be unfair.
Any one of these failures on its own can be enough to make a dismissal unfair, even where the underlying redundancy situation was completely genuine.
“Sham” Redundancy: When the Real Reason Isn’t Redundancy at All
Sometimes redundancy is used as a label for a dismissal that’s actually motivated by something else — a performance issue the employer didn’t want to manage formally, a personality clash, or simply wanting to remove a particular employee without going through a proper conduct or capability process. This is sometimes referred to as a “sham” redundancy.
Establishing this can be more difficult than a straightforward selection or consultation challenge, since it usually involves showing that the stated reason doesn’t hold up against the actual facts — for example, where the role supposedly made redundant is quickly re-advertised, restructured only superficially, or given to someone else shortly afterwards. Where the tribunal finds the real reason for dismissal wasn’t genuinely redundancy at all, the dismissal is assessed against whatever the true reason actually was, which can significantly change the outcome.
Automatic Unfair Dismissal in a Redundancy Situation
A particularly important category worth understanding on its own: where an employee is selected for redundancy because of a reason that would itself be automatically unfair — such as pregnancy, taking family leave, whistleblowing, or trade union activity — the dismissal is automatically unfair, regardless of whether the wider redundancy situation was genuine. This applies even where other employees are being made genuinely redundant at the same time; using a genuine redundancy exercise as cover to remove one particular employee for a protected reason doesn’t make that individual dismissal fair.
Enhanced Redundancy Protection: Under rules in effect since April 2024, pregnant employees and those returning from maternity, adoption, or shared parental leave have a legal right of first refusal (priority access) to any suitable alternative vacancies. Failing to offer a vacancy to an eligible employee in this group before making them redundant can make the dismissal automatically unfair.
Our guide on Automatic Unfair Dismissal Explained covers the full list of protected reasons and explains why claims in this category generally don’t require any minimum length of service.
Bumping: An Overlooked Alternative to Redundancy
Do You Need Two Years’ Service to Claim?
For an ordinary unfair dismissal claim connected to redundancy — challenging selection criteria or consultation, for example — you generally need at least two years’ continuous service, the same qualifying period that applies to unfair dismissal claims generally. Our guide on Unfair Dismissal Under 2 Years: Rules, Exceptions, and the Employment Rights Bill explains the exceptions to this rule in more detail.
Where the redundancy selection is connected to one of the automatically unfair reasons covered above, however, this qualifying period doesn’t apply at all — you’re protected from your first day of employment, regardless of how briefly you’d worked there.
Redundancy Pay vs. Unfair Dismissal Claims
It is important not to confuse your right to challenge an unfair dismissal with your right to receive redundancy pay. They are two separate legal rights, though both generally require two years of service:
- Statutory Redundancy Pay: This is a severance payout you are legally entitled to if you are made redundant after two or more years of continuous service. You receive this even if the redundancy process was 100% fair and lawful.
- Unfair Dismissal Claim: This is a legal challenge you bring to an employment tribunal if you believe the redundancy was a sham, the selection was biased, or the process was flawed. If successful, you may receive compensation for lost earnings, in addition to any redundancy pay you were owed.
Note: If you have under two years of service, you are not entitled to statutory redundancy pay, and you generally cannot claim ordinary unfair dismissal (unless an exception or automatically unfair reason applies).
What Can You Do If You Think Your Redundancy Was Unfair?
If you believe your redundancy wasn’t handled fairly, it’s worth raising this through your employer’s internal appeal process first, if one is available — checking your contract or staff handbook for how this works, and being specific about which part of the process you believe went wrong.
If that doesn’t resolve things, you may have grounds to bring an unfair dismissal claim, and our guide on How to Make an Unfair Dismissal Claim sets out the practical steps, including the strict time limit for doing so. It’s also worth knowing that many redundancy disputes resolve through negotiation rather than reaching a tribunal hearing at all — our guide on Settlement Agreements During Redundancy explains how that route often works in practice, including how a stronger underlying claim can affect what’s realistically on the table.
Contact Us for Expert Employment Law Advice
Working out whether a redundancy was genuinely fair, or whether it crossed the line into unfair dismissal, usually comes down to details in the process — how selection was carried out, what consultation actually looked like, and whether alternatives were properly explored. These are rarely obvious from the outside without a close look at what actually happened.
If you’re weighing up whether to pursue this through a tribunal, our guide on Do I Need a Solicitor for an Employment Tribunal? covers the options available to you, from a one-off case review through to full representation.
Final Thoughts
Redundancy being a lawful reason to dismiss someone doesn’t mean every redundancy dismissal is automatically fair. Selection criteria, consultation, the search for alternative roles, and the genuine motive behind the decision can all be challenged — and where one of the automatically unfair categories is involved, the normal length-of-service rules don’t even apply. If something about your redundancy didn’t sit right, it’s worth having it properly looked at rather than assuming there’s nothing you can do.