Public sector redundancy pay





Before the 2017 general election, public sector redundancy pay arrangements were the focus of intense political scrutiny. The government proposed a series of changes which, if implemented, will make all public sector workers worse off when facing redundancy.
Existing arrangements are the product of established sector-specific collective bargaining across the public sector, but the government wants to impose generic changes on all public sector workers, without exception. 




There are three main planks to the proposed changes which are not limited to redundancy pay and affect other types of payment on termination of employment. These are: 




• capping “exit” payments;




• “clawing back” exit payments from people who return to work in the public sector; and





• changing the calculation formula to cut payments to redundant workers under the various negotiated schemes across the public sector.



These plans remain very much a live threat to current and future public sector workers. In answer to a written parliamentary question (23 May 2018) the government has said it remains committed to “making exit payments fairer to the taxpayer”. A government consultation on capping public sector "exit payments" at £95,000 was launched in May 2019, as Law at Work went to press.