Redundancy - Employment Law

[GreenDog]

I work in the IT Dept of a large British company and some months ago they announced that they were going to make appx 25% of the staff redundant. The official word is that they want a more flexible workforce i.e. they plan to replace the 'displaced' employees with contract staff brought in from India, and in fact this process has already started in earnest.
The criteria used to select the majority employees to be made redundant was their performance score earlier in the year, although some are being included because the role they were in in Feb no longer exists (even though they might be in new roles now). It's worth saying that probably 95% of the people affected aren't classed poor performers, they just fall below the line which was drawn.
There are some positions available and those people who are at risk have been invited to apply for them.

My question is whether the process is actually legal. From what I've read and been told this morning the staff shouldn't have been considered for redundancy as their roles still exist and are to be re-filled by 'bought in' staff. I've also heard that the selection shouldn't be based on performance.

So, can anybody offer any words of wisdom ? Our unions seem to be taking a very low-key approach and we don't seem to be getting much information from them.

[edc]

Outsourcing, moving of work or physical relocation of job roles is a redundancy situation. Performance can be used as a criteria for a selection process. It is unlikely you would use it alone but it can be fair to weight the criteria so that for example performance accounts for x% of the overall score.

[GreenDog]

So far for the majority it seems to have been the sole criteria for selection. There are a small number who are included for other reasons too.

We're talking about appx 200 people being 'displaced'. In my opinion the real reason for all this is that they're trying to get the dept slimmed down to make it more attractive before it's completely outsourced to someone like Accenture for instance.

[F i F]

Lots of further information behind the links

http://www.acas.org.uk/index.aspx?articleid=1611

http://www.tuc.org.uk/tuc/rights_redundancy.cfm

If they really are going to make people redundant and replace with cheaper bought in workers, as opposed to outsourcing then I wonder how big a JCB they are operating to dig a hole for themselves.

Get proper advice, and sharpish, not just from the internets.

Have you had notices of jobs at risk? Has there been any personal one to one consultations. have they just been discussiing with union or area reps as opposed to personal consultations? How many affected as this alters the rules. Or is it all just rumour and conjecture so far.