Does TUPE protect my redundancy rights?

TUPE (Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 2006) provides two key protections for redundancy rights. First, under Regulation 7, dismissal connected to a TUPE transfer is automatically unfair — meaning your employer cannot make you redundant simply because the business has been sold or a service contract has changed hands. If dismissal is connected to the transfer, you can bring an unfair dismissal claim from day one (no 2-year qualifying period applies for automatically unfair dismissal).

Second, your continuous employment with your old employer transfers to the new employer. This means your service years count towards the 2-year qualifying period for unfair dismissal protection and towards any future redundancy pay calculation. If the new employer makes you redundant 6 months after the transfer, your redundancy pay is calculated using all your service years — including those with the old employer.

There is an exception: if the new employer can show an economic, technical, or organisational (ETO) reason entailing a change in the workforce — a genuine restructuring unconnected to the transfer itself — a redundancy may be lawful. Even then, a fair redundancy process (consultation, selection, notice) must be followed, and statutory redundancy pay is owed based on your full service including pre-transfer years.