Made redundant but still doing same role as self employed

[Threepwood]

Hi,

Recently I was made redudant from my role as a communications engineer after 6.5 years. I worked for a company that has contracts with many of the well known telephone / broadband providers (probably about 10 in total) to provide their field engineer services. I recieved an email out of the blue asking me to come to a "Contract realignment meeting" a few days later. This turned out to be a simple there is not enough jobs to go round and we need to let some people go. Was a bit of a suprise to myself and other engineers in my area as we are constantly busy racking up 9 - 12 hour days covering anywhere from 100-200 miles a day. Anyway, they offered me to go on to self employment instead, I reluctantly said yes due to the bomb shell that had just been dropped and having a mortage to pay. Redundancy time came, P45 recieved and day after my final day as PAYE I was back on the road doing the same job only as self employed now. The hours are still the same if not longer (today I did about 11 hours and 249 miles) the work is constant and I have also been told by my supervisor and other senior members of my team that they can't understand why I was made redundant as the work is there. (We were told that we are allowed to do independent work as we are classed as self employed but this is impossible, we are given a full days work by them around 9 -12 hours a day 5-6 days a week so working for anyone else or yourself is just impossible)

I'm just after any advise on where I stand as all I can see is that I've just had my employee rights taken off me (holidays, now I have to pay rent for the van and tools they provide me, pay for fuel) and the role can't be redudant as I'm still doing it (the best part was a week after my redundancy meeting I got an email asking if I wanted to do overtime due to an overload of jobs?). I am also worried about bringing it up with them or if indeed I have grounds to take any legal action as they then could just turn around and stop giving me work full stop.

[ULA]

I think this may be an explanation as to what your ex-employer has done. A redundancy situation as to fall into one of the following categories:

1. Business closure - where the whole of the employer's business is closed
2. Workplace closure - closure or relocation of one or more sites
3. Diminished requirement for employees to carry out work of a particular kind.

If you take the third scenario, the law states that if the employer can show they have a reduced requirement for 'employees' to carry out work of a particular kind they can argue redundancy. This means that in some circumstances the employer's business needs may no longer need employees to do a job but contractors or agency staff can. The job can continue to exist but just not as many employees would be required for it. In these circumstances a redundancy can still exist.

So in your situation I think they have effectively decided that there is a reduced requirement for employees to carry out the work you were doing and that they now want this to be done my contractors on a self-employed basis.

Hope that helps provide and explanation but if you have any more questions please just come back and ask.