Dismissals and business transfers

It is automatically unfair to dismiss an employee where the sole or main reason for the dismissal is the transfer and there is no economic, technical or organisational reason for the dismissal entailing changes in the workforce (regulation 7, Transfer of Undertakings Regulations 2006 (TUPE)). Changes to TUPE were made on 31 January 2014. The effect of these changes on unfair dismissals is explained in Chapter 12. Their general effect is to make it significantly easier to dismiss employees for transfer-related reasons, especially in the context of insolvency.

Unlike most automatically unfair dismissals, a claim based on TUPE requires two years’ service (see Chapter 12).