Right to be accompanied

All good redundancy procedures allow an employee to be accompanied to a redundancy consultation meeting by a union rep or co-worker, although there is no statutory right. This is because the statutory right to be accompanied in section 10 of the Employment Relations Act 1999 is only triggered in the case of meetings concerning disciplinary and grievance issues (Heathmill Multimedia ASP Limited v Jones [2003] IRLR 856).

Although there is no right to be accompanied to the redundancy consultation meeting itself, any meeting to discuss an individual grievance about the redundancy consultation will trigger the right to be accompanied. This would include grievances about, unfair or discriminatory selection practices.