Redundancy advice: suitable alternative employment

[gthomo]

I have recently gone through a consultation period whereby my role was made redundant and I was "at risk" of redundancy. Along with 5 other colleagues we were put into a "closed pool" were we were mapped to an alternative role and expected to apply for the role by attending an interview with the outcome of 3 remaining and 2 being made redundant. I was one of the successful employees and offered the role as apposed to taking redundancy. The role offers the same pay, location and hours, but the role title, reporting manager and responsibilities have changed. I am now day 23 into the new role and I have expressed my reservations and concerns about the role along with issues relating to my health formally on two occasions. On both occasions I have had a meeting with my manager who has informed that they don't believe a trial would not apply in these circumstances due to the fact that I was not made officially redundant and instead only placed at risk before alternative work was offered and if I did leave it would be on the basis that I was resigning from the role.

As it stands I would like to establish if I am entitled to a trial due to the above and if I am what would I need to do in the instance that my manager believes I am not entitled to a trial? I.e. would I need to resign and take this to the employment tribunal or remain in the role and take this to the ET. I am conscious that I have 28 days and if a job trial was applicable I don't want to overlap this period for it to be deemed that I was satisfied with the role and lose the right to redundancy pay.

Thank you in advance for your responses

[ULA]

If this was offered to you as a suitable alternative position then you have the right to a four week trial period if the terms of the new job are wholly are partly different to those of your original contract.

The fact that you were in a pool, alternative positions were found and you were successful is I think is relevant because if you had not been successful you would have been made redundant.

If you can establish a trial period and you did not decide to take the role then you would have to provide a good reason for it not being a suitable alternative position to still retain your redundancy pay. If the company thought your refusal to accept the position was not reasonable then they could refuse to pay your redundancy. If they did this then in the first instance you would need to raise a grievance and then follow the internal procedure and if that did not succeed then you would need to apply to ACAS for early conciliation.