Is there a right to appeal against redundancy selection?

Yes. An employee should always be given the chance to appeal against a dismissal decision and all good redundancy procedures provide a right of appeal. Acas recommends having a redundancy appeals procedure in place.

Where possible the person hearing the appeal should be senior to the original decision maker. In large-scale redundancy exercises, employers sometimes use a “sifting” process, requiring employees to appeal in writing first, identifying specific issues. Only employees who pass this first hurdle are offered a full hearing. As long as the overall selection process is fair, “sifting” in this way will not make a dismissal unfair (Camelot PLC v Hogg [2011] UKEATS/0019/10/B1). There is no absolute legal right to a full hearing of an appeal against redundancy selection, so appeal requests should be written in clear and specific terms, emphasising issues like individual scoring, or failure to offer a particular suitable alternative role, which might have made a difference to the final outcome, making it harder for the employer safely to resist a request for a full appeal hearing.

Wherever possible, appeals should be heard by someone not involved in the redundancy selection. In Romium v McMillan EATS/00007/03, the EAT held that a procedure allowing the person who carried out the assessment also to carry out the appeal was fundamentally flawed and the dismissal unfair. In a very small business where nobody else is available, arranging for an appeal to be heard by the same person who made the selection for redundancy is unlikely to make the dismissal unfair, as long as there is no other practical option. Everything depends on the surrounding circumstances. There is no obligation to approach an external party to hear the appeal (Charles Scott Consulting Engineers Limited v Hamilton UKEATS/0072/10/B1).