Quite urgent advice needed re notice period and change of terms of employment

[thatsnotmypineapple]

I will try and explain this as succinctly as possible. I have posted a couple of times about my current situation, and people have been very helpful.

Following the loss of a contract I am due to be tupe'd over to a new company tomorrow (this is the culmination of a long consultation period). We have been told that we will all be put on gardening leave on Monday whilst they start redundancy consultation. For various reasons I am almost certain I will be made redundant if I transfer.

My existing company have now offered me a 3 month temporary role to take me to the end of August, when I would be due to start my maternity leave (I am currently 22 weeks). I am aware of all the implications re smp etc from my other threads.

This has been in discussion for a couple of weeks, but after much hassling hr have only today sent me the letter confirming the role, which they want me to sign. This has to be done before the end of tomorrow. The letter outlines the job title as "temporary xxxx" and stated that it is a fixed term role until end of August. It also states that my contract and continuous service is unaffected. My thought is though does the specification as a temporary role and with a fixed end date override my current contractual terms? At present I am both contractually and legally entitled to 12 weeks notice. I am worried that by signing the letter they could claim I am not entitled to this notice at the end of the fixed term period. Full notice paid as pilon plus proper redundancy payment at the end of the 3 months is what we had verbally agreed.

Sorry this is so long, but any advice would be gratefully received, as I only have such a short period of time to get this sorted.

I would request to see hr in person if possible and ask if the temporary role can be done under the terms of your current contract. you could then, in the meeting, find out what they would expect the effect on your rights would be. be very specific in your questions and start your meeting by a polite 'you don't mind if I take notes do you'. the letter they hve sent you might just be a standard letter they can churn out from the system - they need to know you as a person to do what they can for you personally and be able to relay to you how their policies will relate to you. good luck, hope everything works out

As the letter specifically says your contract and continuous service are both preserved, there is no reason to think there will be any attempt to say you are entitled to a shorter notice period, and certainly no legal basis for doing so.

Presumably you have no contractual entitlement to PILON though? I would be more concerned about getting that put in the letter tbh, otherwise they could give you notice 12 weeks before ending your employment rather than paying you 12 weeks money at the end.

Thanks both. Pilon is not in my contract, it was just something we discussed.

Even if it were in your contract, that would be a contractual entitlement for your employer to do that, not a contractual entitlement to it for your benefit. As that's going to be a reasonably significant amount of money I would make sure you get that in writing.