please help, employment terminating tomorrow and havent officially accepted VR yet!

[bedraggledmumoftwo]

I may have worded my other thread badly as no response.

I was offered early release with an end date of tomorrow. I have worked my three months notice, and done the internal termination stuff, received my final payslip. But they still haven't sent me a valid offer letter to accept so I haven't formally accepted VR. What do I do??

I am currently thinking I will write a letter (without prejudice) saying that I formally accept the voluntary scheme and the amount due to me through it, once it finally gets worked out, but that I do not accept the quote they have sent which is simply wrong. And sending it special delivery to receive by tomorrow?

Otherwise they could say I just left since I didn't accept the scheme but completed the other termination stuff. At which point I would have to claim constructive dismissal?

I read the other thread, but I'm not quite sure how you've got in the position where you are.

My experience with VR would be that they offer you an amount, and you accept or reject. It would appear that you've said that you're open to VR, but have rejected all their offers (for whatever reason - they might be wrong, but the point remains that they aren't acceptable so you've rejected them). In most cases, that would mean that you were not made redundant, because you cannot agree on a settlement. You don't complete the VR until you have an offer to agree with.

I'd put a hold on all of the additional termination things, pending a revised and suitable offer from your company. When you get an offer that you agree with, then restart termination processes.

I don't think there is much value in writing to say that you accept VR but reject the amount, although you could put your current position in writing - IE that you have accepted VR but are waiting for a suitable offer to be agreed, and that at the moment your last day is tomorrow.

I'm not sure about constructive dismissal, I think you'd want legal advice for that - it may well depend on whether you and they have gone about this the right way.

Why did you start working your notice before agreement on the terms of your VR were agreed?

If you haven't agreed terms yet then surely your employment can't end until you have?

Hi both the terms of the voluntary exit scheme said that if approved to go you had to sign a commitment to leave, which would start your three months notice, but they acknowledged that the csp people were backed up (new pension scheme was introduced in April) so you would have to agree to go before receiving a quote. There was a calculator for you to complete to work out your payout, to be submitted with the application, and the additional term that you or they could renege on the deal if the actual compensation was +/-15% out from what you had calculated.

So I submitted all this 5 months ago, and got turned down initially, then sent a commitment to leave to sign out of the blue three months ago.

A month ago I finally got an offer but when I queried they hadn't recorded my first mat leave at all, and had only recognised oml for the service for the second. This actually made the quote approximately correct as their terms are that they recognise all smp ( eg 9 months x2) but not unpaid mat leave. Instead they had recognised 12+6 so the quote was roughly correct, but I felt compelled to point out the error so it didn't come back to bite me later.

Yesterday after weeks of chasing I finally got a quote that was now £2.5k lower, as they had corrected the omission in my favour of the first mat leave, but not corrected the one against, and were now only recognising oml for both- (2x6 months). Obviously that overwrote the original quote and meant I couldn't just accept as it is patently wrong.

I have written to them today to say that I accept the terms of the civil service compensation scheme in principle, but that I do not accept their specific quote, which is fundamentally incorrect and does not correlate to the amount payable under the terms of the scheme.

I and my manager have completed all termination activities as required of anyone leaving the department, as my last actual working day was last week. I received my final payslip listing termination in this period this morning.

So you have signed an agreement with a clause in place enabling you to back out if it's 15% less than you calculated?

Well, is it?

It is 15% less purely due to their error, based on my original assumption that all my service including mat leave would be counted. They are currently (incorrectly) disregarding a whole year of my six years service (eg 2* aml).

If they pulled their finger out and calculated it correctly according to their own scheme rules, then it would only be 7% less than my full service as the scheme rules only allow the exclusion of unpaid mat leave after smp.

The commitment to leave form that I signed also specified that it would start my notice. And both I and my line manager had to sign it to say we would complete all the termination activities to schedule( eg by the tenth of July for termination by the 31st. I have followed the agreement and their instructions to the letter in good faith. The only reason I am now in this position is that I have been waiting for them to send me a corrected quote form, having provided a detailed breakdown of what it should be, a detailed explanation of their error, and every payslip for the last three years as evidence. What I didn't factor in is the sheer level of incompetence that they would sit on all this for three weeks until I was about to leave, and issue a quote that was clearly rubbish if only they looked at the reams of evidence in front of them. And then not provide said pointless waste of paper to me until the day before I left. It really just beggars belief!

Ah civil service HR. Am sure you will get your money, but the letters will probably turn up this time next year.

I got a letter telling me all about my maternity rights and pay during leave the week I returned to work.

Call them and refuse to get off the phone until you get something from HR. Get your line managers on the case too.

I'd get some legal advice on what you need to do today - as you don't have an acceptable offer, you need to find out if you now need to reject the VR under the 15% rule, and whether you need to attend work next week. I expect that you will, or as you've said, it'll just look like you've left.

You might know what the quote should be, and that you'd be happy to accept that when they get it right, but for now you need to focus on the fact that you don't have an acceptable offer to accept. They might just be slow and incompetent, or they could be playing a game.

Have you taken any advice on whether you could claim constructive dismissal if this goes wrong?

No advice, it is just my assumption that I would have a case for constructive dismissal if they tried to say I hadn't accepted vr through no fault of my own, as their own hoops and incompetence made it impossible to do so and the quote they have reissued does not comply with the Ts and Cs of their own scheme. Also since the issue is them not treating me equitably due to taking mat leave I think there is an element of sex/maternity discrimination in there too.

What I did last night was sign and send the acceptance forms as if I was accepting- but edited and highlighted to accept the Ts and Cs but not the specific quote, which was incorrect. And wrote a letter saying that I formally accepted voluntary exit under the cscs scheme and the associated compensation due based on one month per year of service, yadda yadda, but that I did not accept the specific quote which was incorrect under their own scheme rules, and please could they find someone literate and numerate that could get it right recalculate based on my x years and y days of service.

I'm not sure where constructive dismissal comes in tbh. You are specifically contractually entitled to reject the VR if it is 15% less than you have worked out that it should be, which you say it is. If you have that contractual provision, exercise it. Write to them, notifying them that you are rejecting the VR for the reason provided in clause whatever in the agreement you've signed, and will therefore remain employed until such time as the correct offer is issued.

Maybe it is the wrong term, but essentially I would have resigned in good faith and it would be their fault.

Anyway, the thing is I dont want to turn down the vr, I am delighted to take it. And it is not that the correct offer is 15% lower than it should be, it is that the offer is incorrect due to their incompetence and I do accept the correct amount. I have contacted everyone involved now so they would have a hard time saying I left independently.

Legally, you're shooting yourself in the foot.

I don't think constructive dismissal would stand here. It doesn't look like you have a case, and even if you wanted to argue it anyway and see if a court would agree, the fact that you had the 15% clause and didn't exercise it wouldn't stand in your favour.

At the moment, your options are to accept the quote that they'd offered, or to reject VR based on the 15% clause.

I understand that you don't want to turn down VR, but you may well end up with nothing at the moment. You haven't agreed on a quote, so you need to reject the VR. You can always reject it but state that you'd be willing to reconsider an offer of X.

Follow Flowery's advice. Notify them that you are now rejecting VR, and will remain in employment.

If you choose not to exercise the 15% clause you signed up to that wouldn't make you constructively dismissed. You would clearly have the option to stay employed. Constructively dismissed means your employment contract has been fundamentally breached by your employer to the extent that you have no option but to resign.

Why would I be shooting myself in the foot? I have completed the acceptance paperwork, which does not have a figure, and accepted the voluntary exit terms but edited to say that the current quote is incorrect and I dispute the amount. And written a letter to clarify that I accept the terms ( including the compensation as laid out in the scheme rules as laid before parliament, but that I do not accept the amount specified in their recent quote which is patently incorrect, according to their own rules.

But flowery, the 15% clause is for when the correct quote is 15% lower than I expected. Not when fundamental incompetence and delays mean that the quote is incorrect and they acknowledge that fact, but they are unable to pull their finger out and complete their job in getting me a valid quote to approve in time.

Anyway, I have just dug out my original application and the current, invalid and incorrect quote is only 14.6% under so I wouldn't be able to pull out on those grounds anyway

Well I don't have your agreement in front of me so I can only advise based on what you are saying.

If they have, as you now say, acknowledged that the current quote is incorrect, have they also said when you can expect to receive a revised version and indicated what you should do in the meantime?

Noone has indicated what I should do in the meantime, and trust me I have asked! I have just had assurances that they think they finally have the correct information and will be issuing a quote as soon as possible. So I think they are hoping it will finally be sorted today and have not answered the question of what if it isn't!

Ok well if they agree it isn't correct and are issuing a new one ASAP then the only question is whether you need to come into work on Monday if they haven't done it by the end of today. Ask your line manager.

I assumed from the general approach you took to this thread and your talk of constructive dismissal/discrimination claims that they were insisting it was correct!

I'm an employment lawyer.

If you have made an application for VR and that application has been accepted then it is going to be incumbent on you to make sure that the terms are the terms you thought you were applying for.

If you are not prepared to take the VR on the terms currently stated than you need to remain in employment or else leave and take the package as currently stated. If you go now then you run a very significant risk of having gone on the terms and currently notified to you.

Constructive dismissal is not likely to be an option (plus you would have to pay a fee to even bring the claim). You haven't been constructively dismissed you've asked to go and if you go are likely to be deemed to have been happy with the terms. you can't accept the terms but not the amount, they are one and the same thing.

You need to speak to your manager now and say that if the terms/amount cannot be clarified today and confirmed to be as you believe they should be then you will remain employed and you will be coming in for work as normal.

Thank you all. I have apparently kicked up enough of a storm by threatening to show up on Monday that they have reissued my quote!