UK Collective Redundancy Protective Awards Doubled to 180 Days’ Gross Pay

Worked Arithmetic: Why 180 Days Means Six Months of Uncapped Gross Pay

Many finance directors confuse TULRCA protective awards with capped statutory redundancy payments. On 6 April 2026, doubling the TULRCA s. 189 ceiling turned a single premature town-hall announcement into a seven-figure balance-sheet shock.

Walk through the exact statutory calculation under Sections 189 and 190 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 (TULRCA), as amended from 6 April 2026 by the Employment Rights Act 2025. Where an employer proposes to dismiss as redundant 20 or more employees at one establishment within a period of 90 days or less and fails to comply with Section 188 collective consultation requirements, an Employment Tribunal may make a protective award ordering the employer to pay remuneration for a protected period of up to 180 days (up from 90 days prior to 6 April 2026).

Three legal rules multiply that number far faster than non-UK parent companies expect:

1. Actual Uncapped Gross Pay (Zero Statutory Weekly Cap): Unlike a statutory redundancy payment under ERA 1996 s. 227, a week's pay under TULRCA s. 190 is not subject to the statutory weekly cap. An engineer earning £105,000 gross per year (£287.67/calendar day) carries a maximum individual 180-day protective award of £51,781 gross.
2. Punitive Sanction — Zero Mitigation Offset (Susie Radin): In Susie Radin Ltd v GMB [2004] EWCA Civ 180, the Court of Appeal held that the protective award is punitive, not compensatory. Even if every redundant employee starts a higher-paying job at a rival firm the very next Monday with £0 actual loss, the full 180-day award stands! Where there has been a complete failure to consult (for instance, a US parent announces a global reduction-in-force on a Zoom call with immediate locked laptops), tribunals start at the maximum 180-day ceiling and work downward only for genuine mitigating steps.
3. Zero Service Floor & Zero Insolvency Shield for Solvent Groups: Collective consultation applies from Day 1 of employment—employees with three weeks' service get the exact same 180-day award as 15-year veterans—and Employment Tribunals cannot grant interim relief waivers merely because a parent company wanted speed.

Compare the hard balance-sheet numbers before and after 6 April 2026:

• 30 warehouse and operations staff on £28,000 average gross pay: Pre-April 2026 maximum (90 days) = ~£207,123. Post-6 April 2026 maximum (180 days) = £414,247.
• 45 UK SaaS engineers and commercial staff on £78,000 average gross pay: Pre-April 2026 maximum (90 days) = ~£865,479. Post-6 April 2026 maximum (180 days) = £1,730,959—purely for failing collective consultation, before adding notice pay, statutory redundancy pay, or uncapped individual unfair-dismissal claims from 1 January 2027!

Counting to 20: Hidden Triggers Inside TULRCA Section 195 and 2027 Multi-Site Rules

You can cross the 20-employee threshold without cutting a single headcount seat. Under TULRCA s. 195, proposing to dismiss and re-engage 20 staff over contract changes counts as a collective redundancy.

Audit four counting traps inside TULRCA ss. 188, 195, and 198 across your people operations tracker before declaring your project "safely below 20":

• Trap 1 — Contract Variations & Fire-and-Rehire Count Toward 20 (s. 195(1)): For collective consultation, "dismissal as redundant" bears a wider autonomous meaning than ERA 1996 s. 139: it covers any dismissal for a reason not related to the individual concerned. Proposing to harmonise commission plans, shift patterns, or office locations across 22 staff—where refusal could result in dismissal and re-engagement—triggers full Section 188 collective consultation and the 180-day protective award (alongside the upcoming March 2027 restricted-variation automatic unfair dismissal ban).
• Trap 2 — Rolling 90-Day Lookback & Lookforward: Look across any rolling 90-day window. Under s. 188(3), dismissals already squarely covered by an earlier genuine collective consultation run aren't double-counted merely to restart a fresh obligation on a genuinely separate later wave of 8 roles—unless HR artificially staggered a single 26-role restructuring plan into two batches of 13 to dodge Section 188, which tribunals pierce immediately.
• Trap 3 — Fixed-Term Expiries & Voluntary Leavers: Fixed-term contracts expiring naturally on their pre-agreed end date are excluded under s. 282(2), whereas terminating fixed-term contracts early for budget cuts counts toward the 20! Likewise, inviting voluntary redundancy applications where the business intends to lose 20+ roles overall counts as proposing 20+ dismissals (Optare Group Ltd v TGWU).
• Trap 4 — "One Establishment" Today vs. Multi-Site Aggregation in 2027: Following USDAW v WW Realisation 1 Ltd (Woolworths) [2015] C-80/14, the 20-employee trigger currently tests each local "establishment" (the unit to which workers are assigned—watch out for remote/hybrid UK staff assigned to a single London HQ payroll unit!). Furthermore, under the GOV.UK Employment Rights Act 2025 timeline, secondary regulations scheduled for 2027 add an organisation-wide aggregate threshold alongside the single-establishment rule, preventing retail or hospitality chains from closing 12 small branches of 10 staff each without collective consultation.

The "Announce on Friday" Failure and Form HR1 Criminal Liability

Two irreversible errors happen before HR is even invited into the boardroom: announcing a fait accompli closure, and forgetting that missing Form HR1 is a personal criminal offence for company directors.

Understand the exact statutory trigger point. Section 188 requires consultation to begin "in good time" and in any event at least 30 days before the first dismissal takes effect (for 20 to 99 proposed dismissals) or at least 45 days before the first dismissal takes effect (for 100 or more proposed dismissals). Crucially, under UK Coal Mining Ltd v NUM [2008] ICR 163 (EAT), consultation must cover ways of avoiding the dismissals altogether—meaning if the board publicly announces "the Bristol site will close on 30 November" before consulting employee representatives on the business rationale for closure, Section 188 is already breached!

Even sharper—and personal—is TULRCA ss. 193 and 194. You must file Form HR1 notifying the Secretary of State (Redundancy Payments Service / Insolvency Service) before issuing any dismissal notices and at least 30 days (20–99 redundancies) or 45 days (100+ redundancies) before the first dismissal takes effect, giving a copy simultaneously to the appropriate employee representatives. Under Section 194(1) and (3), failing to file Form HR1 on time is a criminal offence punishable by an unlimited fine—and where committed with the consent, connivance, or neglect of any director, manager, company secretary, or similar officer, that individual officer is personally guilty of the criminal offence!

Copy-Ready Section 188(4) Written Disclosure Checklist & Notice

The statutory 30-day or 45-day clock does not legally start ticking until appropriate representatives receive every mandatory item listed in TULRCA s. 188(4). Use this exact template so zero sub-clause is missed.

Notice how often UK employers omit the mandatory agency-worker disclosure required by TULRCA s. 188(4)(g)–(i)—an automatic technical defect claimant unions spot in five minutes:

STATUTORY COLLECTIVE CONSULTATION DISCLOSURE NOTICE — TULRCA 1992 SECTION 188(4)
Date Delivered to Appropriate Representatives: [DD/MM/YYYY — Day 0 of Statutory Consultation]
To: [Recognised Trade Union Officials / Duly Elected Employee Representatives for Constituency A–C]
Copy of Form HR1 Filed on [Date] Attached at Annex 1 (TULRCA s. 193(6))

1. PROVISIONAL PROPOSAL & BUSINESS REASONS [s. 188(4)(a)]
The Company is proposing, strictly subject to meaningful collective and individual consultation, to restructure [Division / Establishment], driven by [specific financial/operational rationale — attach financial pack]. No final decision has been made.

2. NUMBERS & DESCRIPTIONS OF EMPLOYEES PROPOSED AS REDUNDANT [s. 188(4)(b)]
Total proposed dismissals across [Establishment Name]: [e.g., 34 roles], broken down by job title/grade at Table A.

3. TOTAL NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES OF SUCH DESCRIPTIONS EMPLOYED AT ESTABLISHMENT [s. 188(4)(c)]
Total current headcount across those affected descriptions at [Establishment Name]: [e.g., 82 employees], broken down at Table A.

4. PROPOSED METHOD OF SELECTING EMPLOYEES [s. 188(4)(d)]
Proposed selection pools, four-criterion objective scoring matrix, two-scorer calibration rules, and Regulation 10 family-leave priority procedures set out at Annex 2 for consultation.

5. PROPOSED METHOD & TIMING OF CARRYING OUT DISMISSALS [s. 188(4)(e)]
Consultation meetings scheduled on [Dates]. No notice of dismissal will issue before collective consultation concludes, and no dismissal will take effect earlier than [Date >= 30 / 45 calendar days from today].

6. PROPOSED METHOD OF CALCULATING REDUNDANCY PAYMENTS [s. 188(4)(f)]
Statutory redundancy pay formula under ERA 1996 s. 162 [plus proposed enhanced ex-gratia terms, if any, at Annex 3].

7. AGENCY WORKERS DEPLOYMENT DISCLOSURE [s. 188(4)(g)–(i)]
- Number of agency workers currently working temporarily for and under the supervision/direction of the Company: [Exact whole-company count, e.g., 14]
- Parts of the Company's undertaking in which those agency workers are working: [Departments / Sites]
- Types of work those agency workers are carrying out: [Role descriptions].

Stakeholder Coordination Across Global HQ, HR, and Finance

Multinational restructures fail UK collective law when US or European headquarters demand simultaneous global Day-1 notifications. Ring-fence the UK entity before the global comms deck locks.

Brief international executives and local leads using our manager support restructuring protocol so UK town-hall scripts stay strictly provisional.