Redundant settlement agreement

[wagster]

Being made redundant after going through all the consultation process. Just received my settlement agreement letter to sign after a few weeks of back and forth discussions on the subject of how much the payment would be and also a termination date but on reading it one of the clauses stipulates;

as at the date of the Employee signing this Agreement, the Employee has not started work for any person or organisation and has not received or accepted any offer of employment or any offer to provide personal services to any person or organisation which will provide the Employee with any form of income at any time after the Termination Date.

the problem is this clause was not mentioned previously and after we had agreed a termination date I received an of ferof employment from another company which i have provisionally accepted with a start date a couple of weeks after my agreed termination date.

What are my options? Do I just sign the letter and keep quiet and hope my current employer doesn't find out? I cannot afford to lose the redundancy payout.

[ULA]

A Settlement Agreement (SA) is a document which set out the terms of what the company is going to pay you as “compensation” for loss of your job plus you giving up any rights you have to make a subsequent claim against your employer.

You are not the person to sign a SA since part of the process of signing a SA is that you will be required to take independent legal advice from an employment law specialist. Part of their job is to ensure that the "compensation" being offered is at the correct level given the circumstances and the rights that you are giving up to bring any further claims.

In addition for the clause such as you have described, which seems to be creeping into more and more SA's these days, you would need to let the solicitor know of the offer you have and they would be able to advise how it can be dealt with.

Most employment advisers have a standard payment for providing this advice which is between £300 and £500 which is generally the rate that the employer offers to pay. This is usually enough to cover the costs if the SA is straight forward and there is not much back and forth negotiating terms on your behalf.

If you employer has not told you this part of the process in regard to a SA then you need to go back to them and explain that you understand this is part of the process when asking an employee to sign a SA.