Employment law advice

[2tiredfor]

My current employment contract is a mat leave cover in a Higher Education setting (not teaching.
The person returning to work is returning to a different role in the same team (higher grading). Is it legal to extend my contract or do they have to put it out as a vacancy and interview again.The role does continue to exist.
(England/ Wales for context)

As far as the law is concerned they can do whatever they want. The law does not require an employer to advertise any vacancy or conduct interviews.

They can do either.

My HE would put this out as a vacancy

Some public sector organisations have a policy of advertising although may limit it to internal candidates, but legally they don’t have to.

It’s down to their own policy, there is no legal requirement either way, so it’s how they handle these things and will have a policy which gives the guidance,

They will likely advertise as this is custom and practice in this sector.

Your wording is awkward op,

is it legal to extend your contract yes,

is it legally required to extend your contract no absolutely not,

do they have to put it out as a vacancy, no, not legally, only if their own policy dictates they need to,

can they decline to put it out as a vacancy and just extend, yes again, absolutely legally, but if their own policy states they need to advertise and interview for the role at each contract expiry they will need to do that,

so you need to ask what the policy is, I assume you wish your contract extended nd to stay and you need to speak to your supervisor.

in addition, you’re on a temp contract, for a specific time period, they may not wish this to continue and to permanently recruit to replace the original candidate, this is overwhelmingly likely to go to interview in a higher education setting, as many more candidates will apply for a permanent position than a temp one,