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The redundancy and restructure pack for veterinary practices

Redundancy is the area where a small practice is most likely to create an expensive problem out of a perfectly reasonable decision. This pack is the paperwork, and just as importantly the two traps that catch practices out before the first letter is even sent.

Editable Word document, free, emailed to you.

What is in it

• At risk letter and invitation to consultation, including the paragraph that asks the question you must ask.
• Consultation meeting record, with a field for the practice’s response to every alternative suggested, which is what makes consultation real rather than performative.
• Selection criteria matrix, with the three things that must be excluded or adjusted to avoid a discrimination claim.
• Suitable alternative employment record, opening with a protected status check.
• Three outcome letters: redundancy, redeployment with the statutory trial period, and no change.

Trap one: it is not actually a redundancy

Redundancy has a legal meaning. The business is closing, the workplace is closing, or the need for people to do work of a particular kind has reduced. If the real reason is that somebody is not performing, or you would rather have a different person in the role, it is not a redundancy.

Dressing a capability problem as a redundancy converts a manageable process into an unfair dismissal, and it is usually obvious from the file.

Trap two: the protected group

This is the one that catches good employers. Since 6 April 2024, an employee who is pregnant has priority for any suitable alternative vacancy from the day they tell you, and that priority continues for 18 months from the child’s date of birth where maternity leave was taken. Equivalent protection follows adoption leave and six or more consecutive weeks of shared parental leave.

Priority means they get the vacancy ahead of other affected employees, not merely that they are considered for it. Get it wrong and the dismissal is automatically unfair, with uncapped discrimination exposure alongside it.

The pack makes you run the check before anything else happens, because you cannot comply with a rule if you do not know who it covers.

Why process quality matters much sooner from 2027

Statutory redundancy pay still requires two years’ service, and that is unchanged. What changes on 1 January 2027 is the unfair dismissal qualifying period, which falls to six months.

So an employee with seven months’ service will be able to challenge how a redundancy was handled even though they have no entitlement to redundancy pay at all. The process becomes the exposure long before the money does.

Take advice before you send the first letter. Read it alongside our guide to redundancy in a veterinary practice.