Key takeaways
Under the Employment Rights Act 2025, redundancies across different workplaces may trigger collective consultation obligations.
The government’s Make Work Pay consultation suggests that the duty should apply if an employer proposes a fixed number of dismissals across an organisation over a 90 day period.
The government envisages a trigger of between 250 and 1,000 dismissals, which could vary by an employer’s size.
At the moment, collective consultation requirements apply if an employer proposes to dismiss 20 or more employees at one establishment over a 90 day period. The Employment Rights Act 2025 will extend the duty to some multi-site redundancy situations.
The government's Make Work Pay: threshold for triggering collective redundancy obligations consultation suggests that the extended duty will apply if an employer is proposing a fixed number of redundancies across its organisation in a 90 day period. The threshold figure is likely to be set somewhere between 250 and 1,000, but could vary by employer size.
The Employment Rights Act 2025 makes two key changes to collective redundancy consultation requirements. The first, coming into force in April, increases the penalty for failing to inform and consult from 90 to 180 days’ actual pay per employee. Then during 2027, collective consultation duties will be extended to some multi-site redundancy situations.
Currently, the duty to consult applies if an employer proposes 20 or more redundancies at one establishment, typically a physical workplace, over a 90 day period. The “one establishment” requirement means that small numbers of dismissals at several different workplaces may not trigger consultation obligations, regardless of the overall number. Although the one establishment test will remain in place, in future some multi-site redundancies will also trigger collective consultation, along with associated duties to notify the government of collective redundancies in advance.
Make Work Pay: threshold for triggering collective redundancy obligations
The Employment Rights Act 2025 does not set out when the new consultation obligations will apply. The government is asking for views on what the detailed requirements should be.
Its preferred option is to require employers to carry out collective consultation if they are proposing more than a fixed number of redundancies across their organisation as a whole over a 90 day period. It suggests that the trigger number of dismissals should be set somewhere between 250 and 1,000.
Other options could include imposing consultation duties if an employer is proposing to dismiss more than a certain percentage of its workforce, or having different triggers for employers of different sizes, or a combination of a fixed and percentage approach. However, the government recognises that those approaches would be more complex and might make it more difficult for employers, workers and their representatives to assess whether consultation duties applied.
On balance, employers will welcome the government’s preferred approach, particularly if it adopts a figure towards the top of the suggested dismissal range. It makes it less likely that small numbers of unconnected redundancies across a workforce will trigger consultation obligations, but ensures that large scale redundancy exercises are caught, regardless of where the dismissals occur.
Next steps
- The consultation closes on 21 May 2026.
- Employers should respond to the consultation to make sure the government can take the business perspective on the appropriate approach and threshold into account when deciding when the new duty should apply.
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