Accountants: how to prevent my PILON pushing my tax threshold?

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I’m a high earner. I was made sham redundant and about to receive a settlement relating to disability discrimination. The payout as a lump sum in one month (presumably Feb/ March) will push me over the £100k threshold. I assume this means I lose not only the tax-free childcare but also puts me into a new income tax bracket.
I know I could push some of it into pension, but my employer doesn’t allow uncapped pension contributions. We can only do 10%. Is there another way to protect my payout and avoid tax traps? Can I pay into a private pension for example? Do I need to also negotiate with them to put some this tax year and some the next? Any ideas welcome, thanks

Assuming you're in a defined contribution scheme you should be able to pay into your pension directly and claim the higher tax rate relief on a self assessment or there's a form you can complete.

This is an interesting one; I am not a higher rate tax payer however have a chance of being made redundant & with PILON and other payments would also exceed £100k for 2025-2026; we're due to go to 30 free hours from this Sept for DC2 and we get CB & TFC for 2 kids too. Would be a huge loss.

Thanks, sorry for misunderstanding but I’m pretty sure I can’t pay into my employer’s scheme more than 10% ?
To be honest, I wish there was another way that I could take the payout in order to protect me whilst I jobhunt (for potentially six months!) without the threshold breach.

There's no other way aside from charity donations, I have been in this exact redundancy situation. If your pension is a defined contribution pension I.e. not a defined benefit / final salary scheme then you should be able to make a payment direct outside of any employer caps. The limit is £60k for the year / or your earnings for the year whichever is higher. You can use up prior years unused allowance.

Get your pension details and register with the company online and take a look. It's likely a pot of money (defined contribution)

There’s still time to set up your own pension scheme you can pay into