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Introduction to this document

Letter confirming employee not redundant

During a redundancy programme, you’ll have notified some employees that their roles are at risk. However, where that situation changes and an employee is no longer at risk, you’ll need to let them know.

Requirement to act reasonably

Although redundancy is a potentially fair reason for dismissal, for a redundancy dismissal to then be fair, you must comply with the statutory requirement to act reasonably. In a redundancy situation, this means adopting a fair selection procedure, consulting with those employees whose jobs are potentially at risk of redundancy and, where possible, offering alternative employment to those who are then provisionally selected for redundancy. It’s also advisable as part of an overall fair procedure to call for volunteers for redundancy too as this can provide a way of avoiding, or reducing the need for, compulsory redundancies, although you don’t always have to do so. Even if you do, you don’t have to automatically accept any volunteers as you retain the right to make the final selection for redundancy based on your future business needs.

Change of circumstances

Once you’ve fairly selected those employees who may need to be made redundant, you should have written to them advising them of their provisional redundancy selection – see our Second Redundancy Consultation Letter. You should then also have continued to consult with them. However, if the situation subsequently changes such that an employee’s role is no longer at risk of redundancy, you’ll need to formally advise them of this, and that’s the purpose of our Letter Confirming Employee Not Redundant. It informs them that they will therefore remain in their existing post on their current terms and conditions of employment. The circumstances in which this situation might occur include where you no longer need to make as many people redundant as you originally envisaged, say, due to a change of business circumstances, or where you’ve accepted an appropriate volunteer for redundancy with the result that the employee’s particular role is now safe. If you have accepted enough volunteers such that no compulsory redundancies at all are necessary, use our Letter Confirming No Compulsory Redundancies Necessary instead. In addition, our letter isn’t for use where the reason for the employee no longer being at risk is because you’ve offered them alternative employment - see our Offer of Alternative Work.

Letter timing

Don’t issue our letter until the other “at risk” employees have been formally notified of their redundancy and have been given notice of dismissal – see our Redundancy Termination Notice and Voluntary Redundancy Termination Notice. Finally, note that our letter shouldn’t be used for any employees who have already been given notice of redundancy dismissal – if there’s a change of circumstances after notice has been given, you’ll need our Letter Withdrawing Redundancy Notice due to Change of Circumstances (and you’ll need to obtain the employee’s express consent to that withdrawal).