New Acas guidance in the offing

The Acas employment advisory and conciliation service is to produce new guidance on collective redundancy consultations.

Following criticism of the reliability and clarity of existing information on collective redundancy consultations, the government has asked Acas to draft detailed new guidance. The government had proposed a Code of Practice, but decided against pursuing this route — instead preferring flexibility for employers.

The guidance will cover matters such as when a collective redundancy consultation should start; who should be included in the consultation; topics to be discussed during the consultation; how the consultation should be conducted; and at what point a consultation can be brought to a close.

And the guidance will try to address the controversial issue of what, for the purposes of collective redundancy, counts as a single “establishment”. However, given opaque decisions by the European Court of Justice in this area, the possibility of a definitive answer seems limited.

There are a number of tests for demonstrating what constitutes an “establishment” that the guidance is likely to reference.

These include geographical location; management structure; management or financial autonomy; cohesion of the workforce; nature of the work undertaken or type of service provided; contractual relationship between employer and employee; and level within the company at which the decision to dismiss is taken.