Anyone ever been made redundant when company gone into administration?

[reddaise]

DHs company has gone into administration - what do we expect? Panicking!

Lots of different things could happen. Hard to know what it is you want to know.

How long has he been there, how old is he, what's his salary range? Does it look like the co might be bought out? What have the administrators said so far?

He should dig out his CV and get a march on the job hunting if nothing else. Don't hang around waiting for redundancy money because the co may not pay any and it can take months to get it through the govt.

My employer went into administration & ceased trading immediately in 2019. Everyone was made redundant on the spot, except for a handful of finance & IT people who worked with the administrators for a couple of months.

The company went bust over the weekend, and we were all called to a meeting at a local hotel on the Monday morning to hear a presentation from the administratiors. Then we were allowed into the office to return company property collect our personal stuff. All our security passes, computer logons & passwords had been disabled. We all walked out with our stuff in cardboard boxes then went to the pub.

We received statutory redundancy pay from the government & had to register as unsecured creditors of the insolvent business. The pension scheme went into the government’s Pension Protection Scheme. The company was liquidated & we all received small payouts a few years later.

Thanks so much for this.

My experience (2013) was exactly the same as @BarelyLiterate 's.

The company I worked for went into administration. The administrators wanted to sell off as many sections of the business that they could, in some cases including mine staff were tupe'd across to the new owner. We continued to be paid each month by the administrators until our business unit was sold. Various groups of internal support staff were made redundant as their roles were no longer required and if assets were bought but staff that supported them were not tupe'd as part of the sale.

DH was in this position a year ago. There was doubt they would all receive their salaries which were due the following week but thankfully they did. He got stat redundancy - but capped at their max as his pay was higher. It was equivalent I think to about one month salary for him. Thankfully he got a job very quickly at around the same level so it all worked out but I was incredibly stressed at the time.

Back in 2004 - call from manager 2 days before November payday with offer for her to collect personal items for us .
We weren't allowed in . Recieved November pay along with holidays and stat redundancy the day after boxing day .

Very very nearly back in July last year also - we were bought in a pre- pack and all employees tupped over , however it nearly didn't happen and I was 2 hours away from not being able to pay July salaries.

i work in insolvency, an administration is done ahead of a liquidation when there will be a better outcome, for example the administrators can trade a business, sell parts of it etc. in both these scenarios it is possible he will keep his job. If the administrators trade the company or part of it is sold he will keep the same terms of employment under the TUPE regulations.

if he is made redundant be will receive arrears of wages, holiday pay
owed, statutory redundancy pay (if eligible) and pay in lieu of notice (PILON) if he finds a job before being made redundant he won’t get redundancy and the PILON will be reduced by the wages he receives (because you can’t work 2 jobs at once). He will claim from the redundancy payments service and the holiday, wages and redundancy will come through first then he will be asked whether he’s had a new job since being made redundant and they will calculate and pay the PILON - he does have a duty to try to reduce this as much as possible. If he has taken more holiday than he’s accrued then this isn’t deducted, this is more usual when the insolvency happens in late summer with a December holiday year.

it seems scary but if you have a good firm of insolvency practitioners then they will talk him through the process and help him with the forms/answer questions. He possibly will have limited access to the office so make sure he collects any payslips etc he needs to be able to complete the forms as they will ask for wage amounts and holiday owed and where there is a difference to what the insolvency practitioner puts this can slow things down a bit whilst it is checked.

if he is made redundant, I hope he manages to secure another job quickly. We used to get a nice handy book from citizens advice to hand out but these were canned in 2010, but they can be quite helpful with advice if you need it.

@NorthernDuck thanks for this info it is appreciated!

What we're worried about it how long can employer who's in administration strong DH along? He's been there nearly 10 years so redundancy would be worth waiting for but for how long.. I'm guessing they're trying to sell the company or at least his site, but can this take weeks? Surely the majority of the staff leave in this situation and it becomes less of a viable business to a potential buyer if the experienced staff leave and they need to recruit a new workforce?
It's a manufacturing company btw!

@reddaise usually they would try to sell it as soon as it goes into administration as there are risks of trading it - losing staff, making a loss etc. this is called a pre-pack administration. A manufacturing business I imagine they wouldn’t want to trade for more than a few weeks but a business like a hotel I’ve seen traded for a year before it’s sold as the value of the property is tied to the trade.
With 10 years service, he will get 10 weeks pay in lieu of notice plus his redundancy so I would brush up his cv and, if he likes his job just sit it out because he should get a reasonable chunk of money to see him through (depending on his age this could be up to 15 weeks redundancy and 10 weeks PILON so 25 weeks of pay. (although it is capped at £643 a week)). This is the table showing how many weeks he’d get. https://www.lra.org.uk/sites/default/files/2019-03/Redundancy%20Pay%20Table.pdf

redundancy pay isn’t taxed but PILON is taxed as wages so you need to factor this into your calculations.

The company my husband worked for went bust. He was told on the Friday on the Monday he went in to be told he would get x amount. Use the gov.uk redundancy calculator to check the amount and he also got pay in lieu of notice.

Most of his colleagues got taken on the day after by another company.

He got another job elsewhere quickly but asked for a long start date and took a couple of weeks off before working.

He was in his late 50s at the time and a few potential employers were openly hostile about his age. Their loss.