Your employer may group together similar roles in a 'selection pool' to make sure you're selected in a fair way.
Your employer may use agreed criteria to choose who to make redundant from the selection pool.
It's against discrimination law (Equality Act 2010) to select anyone because of:
- age
- disability
- gender reassignment
- marriage and civil partnership
- pregnancy and maternity – see the Acas guide to redundancy for employees who are pregnant or on maternity leave
- race
- religion or belief
- sex
- sexual orientation
It's also against other areas of employment law to select anyone because of:
- family related leave – for example parental, paternity or adoption leave
- role as an employee or trade union representative
- membership of a trade union
- a part-time or fixed-term contract
- working time regulations – for example if you've raised concerns about holiday entitlement or rest breaks
- concerns you've raised about not being paid the National Minimum Wage
- concerns you've raised about whistleblowing
Your employer must also not use criteria that indirectly discriminate against you. For example, if they use flexible working as one of the criteria, they could be discriminating against women. They would need to show that flexible working is no longer possible after the organisation has changed.
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