TL;DR: A UK redundancy process runs in six practical stages, but only some of them are governed by statute — and the rules split sharply at 20 proposed redundancies. This guide walks through each stage with the legal minimums, realistic timings, and a straight answer on the "70/30 rule" people keep searching for.
Running a redundancy that holds up afterwards
By the time a redundancy lands on your desk, the decision has usually been made somewhere above you. What you own is the process — and with it, the tribunal risk.
Here's the framing that makes the rest of this straightforward. Some stages of a UK redundancy process are set by statute: the collective consultation thresholds, notice periods, redundancy pay. Others are Acas good practice: the appeal, the length of individual consultation. Skipping the first is unlawful. Skipping the second is evidence against you when someone argues the process was unfair.
This guide walks through six stages — business case, selection pool, consultation, selection, notice, appeal — and tags each one. On timing, there is no official end-to-end figure, so we build it from statutory floors plus honest estimates, clearly labelled as such. Where Acas and GOV.UK say it better, we link out rather than paraphrase them into staleness.
The six stages of a UK redundancy process
People search for "the 5 stages of redundancy" constantly. There is no official five-stage model in UK law. Acas publishes a 10-step process, and it is the authoritative walkthrough — the six stages below simply group those steps the way a project plan actually runs.
- Business case — establishing that redundancy is genuinely needed (Acas step 1).
- Selection pool — deciding who is in scope before anyone is scored.
- Consultation — individual, collective, or both, depending on the numbers (Acas step 4).
- Selection — applying criteria and scoring the pool (Acas step 5).
- Notice, pay and alternative roles — the outcome stage (Acas step 6).
- Appeal — Acas step 9.
Only two of these have a hard legal clock attached. Collective consultation has statutory minimum periods once you cross the 20-redundancy threshold. Notice has statutory minimums tied to length of service. Everything else — how long you spend building the case, how many individual meetings you hold, how quickly you hear an appeal — is judged on reasonableness, not against a stopwatch.
Stages 1 and 2: the business case and the selection pool
The business case comes first and nothing in law governs how long you spend on it. That is precisely why it deserves care: it is the document that has to survive scrutiny later, so write it as though it will be read aloud in a hearing.
Acas's first step is checking that redundancy is genuinely needed. This matters more than it sounds. A restructure that keeps the same work but changes who does it is a different legal animal from a redundancy, and labelling it wrongly is how employers end up defending a dismissal that had no genuine redundancy behind it. Be specific in the document about what work is disappearing, reducing, or moving — not just which headcount number you are trying to reach.
Then the pool. Acas is clear that selection pools exist to make selection fair, and that a pool should group roles that are the same or similar, including roles with transferable or comparable skills. That last clause is where most pools go wrong. If two teams do materially the same work under different job titles, drawing the boundary around one of them is a decision you will have to justify.
The common failure is drawing the pool too narrowly around the person you already have in mind. A pool of one is not automatically unlawful, but it needs a very good justification — a genuinely unique role with no comparable skills anywhere nearby. If you find yourself constructing an argument for why an obviously similar role sits outside the pool, that is a signal rather than an obstacle to work around.
The practical advice is simple and cheap: document why the pool boundary sits where it does, and do it before you score anyone. A rationale written after the scores are in reads exactly like what it is.
Stage 3: consultation, and the 20-redundancy threshold that changes everything
This is the split every HR director needs to get right, because your obligations change shape entirely at one number.
According to Acas guidance on collective consultation, collective consultation obligations bite only when all three of these conditions hold together:
- 20 or more redundancies are proposed;
- at a single establishment;
- within a 90-day period.
All three. Nineteen redundancies at one site does not trigger it. Twenty-five spread across two genuinely separate establishments may not either. Twenty over four months is a different calculation from twenty over four weeks. Employers most often misjudge their obligations by testing one condition and assuming the rest.
Under 20 proposed redundancies
GOV.UK is explicit that where fewer than 20 redundancies are proposed, there are no rules about how the consultation is carried out. Read that carefully: no prescribed process is not the same as no duty. An absent or sham consultation is one of the fastest routes to an unfair dismissal finding, because the tribunal asks whether the employer acted reasonably, and "we told them it was decided" is not a consultation.
Individual consultation has no statutory minimum length, so any number of weeks you see quoted is somebody's practical estimate rather than law. Acas expects at least one private meeting with each affected employee, and evidence that suggestions raised in those meetings were genuinely considered. "Genuinely considered" means a written response to the suggestion, not a minute recording that it was noted.
Preparation is most of what makes those meetings work. Go in with the business case and the pool rationale already written down, so you can explain the boundary if you are asked rather than improvising it. Have the figures specific to that individual to hand — their notice entitlement and how their redundancy pay has been calculated — because those are the first questions anyone asks and vagueness reads as evasion. Take a note-taker, and frame the meeting as a proposal you are consulting on, not a decision you are delivering.
20 or more proposed redundancies
Now the clock starts. Acas sets the minimum periods before the first dismissal takes effect:
- At least 30 days where 20 to 99 redundancies are proposed.
- At least 45 days where 100 or more are proposed.
There is a second obligation here that is easily missed: the employer must notify the Redundancy Payments Service before issuing any individual dismissal notice, within those same windows. It is a separate step from consulting the representatives, and it is easy to miss because it sits outside the consultation process itself.
GOV.UK sets out what collective consultation must actually cover: ways of avoiding the redundancies, the reasons for them, how to minimise the number of dismissals, and how to limit the effects — retraining, for instance. If your consultation meetings only ever discuss the fourth of those, the process is not doing what the law asks of it.
The cost of getting this wrong has literally doubled. Under the Employment Rights Act 2025, the maximum protective award for failing to consult collectively rose from 90 days' pay to 180 days' pay per affected employee on 6 April 2026, as Acas confirms.
Per affected employee. Across a 50-person process, that is not a rounding error on a legal budget.
One sequencing rule underpins everything in this stage: notice cannot be issued while consultation is still live. Issuing it early is the clearest possible evidence that the consultation was a formality, and it collapses the defence of every decision that follows.
Stage 4: selection criteria, in plain English
Acas's test reduces to one line: criteria should be fair, based on facts that can be measured, and not affected by personal opinions.
That rules out less than people expect. Performance, skills and qualifications, attendance and disciplinary record are all commonly used and all defensible, provided you can show the evidence behind each score. The significant carve-out is attendance: absence related to disability, pregnancy or maternity must be excluded from the count. Scoring it in is both discriminatory and entirely visible in the records.
Consistency matters as much as the criteria themselves. The same scoring approach, applied across the whole pool, by people who can explain in a sentence why one person scored a 3 and another a 4. If a manager cannot articulate that, the score is an opinion wearing a number.
The Equality Act 2010 exposure is worth stating plainly, because it catches criteria that look entirely neutral. Last-in-first-out is the classic example: it correlates with age, which makes it a potential indirect discrimination claim rather than the safely mechanical option employers imagine it to be. The same logic applies to criteria that quietly disadvantage part-time workers or anyone who has taken family leave.
The stakes shift if a protected characteristic is in play. Selecting someone for a protected reason moves the case out of ordinary unfair dismissal territory entirely — no qualifying service is needed to bring it.
Practically: keep the scoring matrix, the evidence behind each score, and the moderation notes. That bundle is the defence. Nothing else you produce during the process does as much work.
What is the "70/30 rule" in redundancy?
There is no 70/30 rule in UK redundancy law. Neither Acas nor GOV.UK uses the phrase, it appears nowhere in the legislation, and it is absent from the leading legal commentary on selection criteria.
It persists because people use it as shorthand for one of three different things:
- Role-mapping. A restructured role that is roughly 70% similar to the old one is treated as a continuation rather than a new appointment to be competed for.
- Scoring weight. A convention splitting a selection matrix 70/30 between objective criteria and more subjective ones.
- Settlement talk. Offering a proportion of what a claim might be worth at tribunal.
None of these carries legal force, and none will help you in a hearing. A percentage cannot substitute for a documented, objective, consistently applied process — a tribunal will ask how you scored people and what evidence sat behind it, not what ratio you applied.
If someone in your business is citing a 70/30 rule, the useful move is to ask which of the three they mean. Then go back to the Acas test and build the decision on that instead.
Stage 5: notice, redundancy pay and alternative roles
Once consultation has concluded and selections are made, three things need to be right.
Notice. GOV.UK sets the statutory minimum notice periods: at least one week for service between one month and two years; one week for each full year from two to twelve years; capped at 12 weeks. Contracts can give more and frequently do. They can never give less.
Redundancy pay. Acas sets out the formula: half a week's pay for each full year of service under 22, one week for each full year aged 22 to 40, and one and a half weeks for each full year aged 41 and over. Only the most recent 20 years count, and the two-year qualifying period of continuous service applies before anyone qualifies at all.
A week's pay is capped. From 6 April 2026 the cap is £751 a week, which caps statutory redundancy pay at £22,530, under the Employment Rights (Increase of Limits) Order 2026. Date-stamp that figure wherever you write it down: it uprates each April, and a policy document carrying last year's number is a small, avoidable underpayment waiting to happen.
Alternative roles. Where you offer suitable alternative employment, Acas explains that a statutory four-week trial period applies, starting once the old contract has ended. If the role needs training and you want a longer trial, it must be agreed in writing with a clear end date before it starts — otherwise the employee's redundancy rights are at risk.
Resist the pressure to get someone into any role rather than pay them out. Pushing someone into a materially worse role and treating their refusal as a forfeit of redundancy pay creates a different claim risk entirely — one that is harder to defend than the redundancy itself.
Stage 6: the appeal you are not legally required to offer
An appeal is not a statutory requirement in a redundancy. Acas calls it good practice, and that is exactly its legal status.
It is also one of the cheapest things for a claimant's representative to point at. "My client was given no opportunity to challenge the score" is a line that costs the other side nothing and lands every time.
Acas's suggested shape is practical: around five days for the employee to lodge an appeal, heard without unreasonable delay, ideally by a senior manager who was not previously involved — or as impartial as is achievable in a small business, where that may be a genuine constraint rather than an excuse. The employee can be accompanied by a colleague or trade union representative.
The cost-benefit is straightforward. An appeal stage adds roughly a week to your timeline, and it is the last opportunity to find and fix a process error while it is still a process error rather than a claim.
How long does a UK redundancy process take?
There is no single official figure. As a working shape: a straightforward process under 20 redundancies typically runs four to eight weeks end to end, while a 20–99 collective process carries a 30-day statutory floor before notice can even start, pushing realistic totals to two or three months. Treat both as estimates rather than law — no official body publishes a total duration. Acas describes each stage and never adds them up; the vendor pages that quote a confident total are not sourced to anything. So build the answer from the parts, and be honest about which parts are law.
| Stage | Duration | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Business case and pool | Days to several weeks | Unregulated — typically the longest and most variable part |
| Collective consultation (20–99) | 30 days minimum | Statutory floor |
| Collective consultation (100+) | 45 days minimum | Statutory floor |
| Individual consultation (under 20) | No minimum; commonly 2–4 weeks | Practical estimate, not law |
| Selection and outcome meetings | Around a week | Practical estimate |
| Notice | 1–12 weeks by service | Statutory minimum |
| Appeal window | Around 5 days to lodge, plus the hearing | Acas good practice |
For a small process under 20 redundancies, the preparation and the notice period are what actually set the length. A five-person redundancy with staff on two years' service can run its consultation and outcome meetings in a few weeks, then attach two weeks' notice on top.
For a 20–99 collective process, the 30-day floor and the notice period stack. That is the scheduling trap: notice cannot start until consultation has finished, so the two run consecutively, never in parallel. A 30-day consultation followed by eight weeks' notice for a long-serving employee is roughly three months before that person leaves — and that is the statutory minimum, not a realistic plan.
What changed in 2026, and what is coming in 2027
Two changes are already in force, both from 6 April 2026.
The protective award for failing to consult collectively doubled, from a maximum 90 days' pay to a maximum 180 days' pay per affected employee, under the Employment Rights Act 2025. And the statutory weekly pay cap rose to £751, taking maximum statutory redundancy pay to £22,530.
Looking ahead, an organisation-wide threshold for collective consultation is expected in 2027. It would count proposed redundancies across the whole employer rather than only at a single establishment — a significant change for anyone running multiple sites, since separate small processes that currently sit below the threshold would be aggregated.
It is not law yet. The implementing regulations have not been published, and the detail could move. Treat it as a modelling exercise rather than a reason to change your current approach: if you operate across several sites, work out what your last two years of redundancies would have looked like under an aggregated count, and keep that on file for when the regulations land.
The process is the defence
Redundancy claims are rarely lost on the business decision. Tribunals do not generally second-guess whether a company needed to reduce headcount. They are lost on the paperwork around it — a pool that cannot be justified, a consultation that was announced rather than held, scores nobody can explain.
Three things carry the weight. A defensible pool, documented before anyone was scored. A genuine consultation, scaled correctly to the threshold your numbers actually trigger. And objective criteria you can evidence line by line.
None of which happens in ideal conditions. A lean HR team runs a redundancy alongside the day job, while fielding a surge of individual questions about notice, pay and what happens next — at precisely the point it has least capacity to answer them.
For more guidance on UK employment law written for the people running the process, the Aura HR blog covers this ground regularly.