Quick TUPE question

[Ekona]

Company A is contracted to supply services to Company B.
Company A uses existing staff to manage this, does not employ anyone specific for this contract. Workload is shared among 6 employees equally.
Company B wants to move services to another contractor at the end of the contract term. They request TUPE details for this.

Does Company A have/need to supply any details for this? None of the employees in question have any intention of moving to another company, and Company A has enough work to keep them all employed.


Thanks folks

[marshalla]

If no staff are transferring then there are no employment contracts to be protected so I don't see how TUPE could possibly apply. Either Company B hasn't read far enough down the ACAS page to understand that, or they are under the impression that some of the existing staff are contractors who will be moving to Company C in due course (or some of the staff are fibbing about their intentions to stay with Company A).

[Ekona]

Kinda what I thought too, thanks

It would be different if staff were taken on specifically for that contract and would no longer be needed if the contract wasn't there, but if Company A has the work for the existing employees is there anything legally compelling the company to offer TUPE to them?

[loafer123]

Doesn't it depend what proportion of each of the 6 people's time is spent on that contract?

[Ekona]

It's a good question, does it?

Their personal contracts do not specify which contract they're on, just that they're employed by Company A to do X. For the sake of arguments, lets say they're electricians. They go from site to site, doing various electrical works, and sometimes that work will be on the contract for Company B. Sometimes it won't, there's no hard and fast rule really, it's very much workload dependant. The contract for Company B certainly isn't the bulk of the work though.

[loafer123]

Ekona said:

The contract for Company B certainly isn't the bulk of the work though.

That probably answers the question.

[Ekona]

Great stuff, thank you.

[Martin4x4]

This is probably about due diligence to establish if they have any TUPE obligations.

[Hughesie]

Quick rule of thumb is if working 50%+ on the account TUPE would apply (or certainly worth looking at further)