30-05-2008
Redundancy and Mobility
The summer has started with a Court of Appeal case examining whether or not mobility clauses can be used to avoid redundancy payments.
The case of Home Office v Evans and the Court of Appeal has just handed down its judgment. In short, the Home Office had immigration officers working at Waterloo Station and decided to close the Immigration Office there instead of using Immigration checks and controls elsewhere.
Instead of making senior staff redundant, as they had mobility clauses in their contracts, it was proposed to move them to an Immigration Station at Heathrow. The senior staff involved resigned and the case was heard at Tribunal. The question effectively was whether or not mobility clauses could be invoked to say that there was not a redundancy situation.
In short, the answer is that they can. The proviso is that the mobility clause is used consistently throughout the process. What this means is that an employer can not make redundancies and then use a mobility clause as a defence if the redundancy is found to be flawed.
However, if an employer intends to cease doing business at a particular place and the staff there have mobility clauses, providing the employer invokes the mobility clause reasonably and from the start of the process, then the clause will mean that there is not a redundancy situation at all.
The case of Home Office v Evans and the Court of Appeal has just handed down its judgment. In short, the Home Office had immigration officers working at Waterloo Station and decided to close the Immigration Office there instead of using Immigration checks and controls elsewhere.
Instead of making senior staff redundant, as they had mobility clauses in their contracts, it was proposed to move them to an Immigration Station at Heathrow. The senior staff involved resigned and the case was heard at Tribunal. The question effectively was whether or not mobility clauses could be invoked to say that there was not a redundancy situation.
In short, the answer is that they can. The proviso is that the mobility clause is used consistently throughout the process. What this means is that an employer can not make redundancies and then use a mobility clause as a defence if the redundancy is found to be flawed.
However, if an employer intends to cease doing business at a particular place and the staff there have mobility clauses, providing the employer invokes the mobility clause reasonably and from the start of the process, then the clause will mean that there is not a redundancy situation at all.
