Help with Furlough scheme and redundancies!

[Forgone90]

Hi all, the company I work for is in the travel industry, we have had an email saying that they have handed there notice into the airport we are based at which ends in November... They are not willing to pay the money towards the furlough scheme if they are not open which looks unlikely for a while.. They said if nothing changes by the end of July they will look into starting redundancy consultations. We have a zoom meeting with the director next week where he wants people to have ideas on anything we can do to help the situation... The normal process would be at the end of the contract a new company would come in and we would all be transfered across by TUPE to the new company yet with all this happening its not certain any company would want to come in to take over.

Now I had an idea but befor I put it forward to the boss I wanted to run it though on here... So basically between the start of furlough and July we would all have accumulated about 15-1600 pounds worth of holiday pay... Now if I can get everyone to agree for all of us to give up the holiday pay could our company technically bring us back to work part time furlough and then put us on annual leave.. They would have to pay us the holiday we have accured anyway so I can't see what they can't offset the furlough cost with our holiday pay we have accured.. That way we get to stay on furlough until end of October in the hope. A new company comes in to transfer us over and then our company is no worse off as they would have had to pay us the holiday pay if we were made redundant anyway?

Is this a stupid idea?

Thanks in advance

Just to say to keep us on furlough for the 3 months would only cost between 7-900 pounds per person

No one would be “giving up” their holiday pay. But yes, if your employer kept you all employed, furlough you and get you to take your accrued annual leave during furlough. This way the government would fund 80% of the holiday pay bill for them. No brainer!

OK great thank you, I think the only thing that may trip it up is that I ready you can't stay on the furlough scheme if there are planned redundancies at the end of it.. Could they get round it by saying they don't expect redundancies as they expect a TUPE transfer when another company comes in... Obviously if no other company comes in then redundancies would take place once the furlough scheme ends.

There is no such rule. The Prime Minister made noises about companies shouldn’t be using it but there is no such rule, and it wouldn’t be possible for there to be- many business will not know one way or the other whether redundancies will be needed, and a main principle of redundancy is not making the decision in advance where possible, and consulting with employees genuinely to try and avoid it.

But ultimately there is nothing in the furlough rules about anything of the kind.

OK thank you very much :)