Is there a requirement for "collective consultation"?

[Squirrel192]

A family member has just received a very flaky letter/pack regarding job restructuring and the need to cut hours/staff including the threat of redundancy for an undisclosed number of people where they work. The information (printed on plain paper) is full of contradictions, missing information and mentions nothing about a collective consultation nor TUPE and lacks detail across the company as a whole or suggests how jobs could be saved in the process. This seriously concerns me.

Whilst I don't want to go into details about the business or what they do. It is a huge corporate entity comprised of nearly a thousand separate businesses across the UK ran as separate practices under one umbrella organisation. Each practice carries out the same job role. It appears across the company over 500 job roles could be at risk.

What concerns me is the flakiness of it all with the corporate entity wanting the separate practices to deal with the "consultation" in a quick manner at a practice level. As I've been involved personally in long running "collective consultations" within retail environments in the past it seems a collective consultation should be happening here and isn't been.

Does anyone else have any views on this?

[ULA]

I think the issue of whether collective consultation will be required is going to hinge on the definition of "establishment" since where an employer is proposing to dismiss as redundant 20 or more employees at one establishment, within a period of 90 days or less, statutory collective consultation is required to be undertaken. The required consultation period must being in good time and where the employer is proposing to dismiss 100 or more employees this must be at least 45 days and otherwise at least 30 days, before any dismissal takes effect.

If multiple redundancies are being planned over a number of "establishments" and at each of there are to be less than 20 redundancies then there is no requirement for collective consultation.

In the circumstances of the business as you have set it out the consideration of whether it is one establishment or many will turn on relevant facts. A starting point on this would be, if geographically, employees are assigned to a local employment unit or as you describe it separate businesses", then each of these may be considered to be "one establishment".

Do you have any further details of why TUPE may be involved here, or are you thinking this may be on the basis of suitable alternative employment in another of the separate businesses?

[Squirrel192]

If multiple redundancies are being planned over a number of "establishments" and at each of there are to be less than 20 redundancies then there is no requirement for collective consultation.

In the circumstances of the business as you have set it out the consideration of whether it is one establishment or many will turn on relevant facts. A starting point on this would be, if geographically, employees are assigned to a local employment unit or as you describe it separate businesses", then each of these may be considered to be "one establishment".

Do you have any further details of why TUPE may be involved here, or are you thinking this may be on the basis of suitable alternative employment in another of the separate businesses?

So whilst the employees work for "separate practices all owned and managed by the corporate entity with different names" they are all paid directly by the corporate entity. If there are vacancies at other "practices" they could transfer to them (and some have in the past) and so could also in effect TUPE over to them, but I suspect the mere mention of TUPE on the consultation pack would help elevate the suggestion that collective consultation is appropriate even though the employees work at different practices....if you get my drift?