Advice for niece

[HippyHappygal]

She has been at her workplace 13 years. Told her area of work was closing and that the alternative role was a training course to be a swim instructor. She has health issues and cannot afford to do this. She was currently on 20 hours so this breaches the conditions of the job role being the same or very similar as well as not being do able because of her health. She has been told she is entitled to redundancy but is worried they will go back on that and refuse it based on the fact that she won't take this other role. So firstly, can they do that and how would she proceed if they did?
Secondly, I believe she is entitled to three months paid in leiu of the notice they have to give her based on her years of service as well as unpaid holiday and of course the actual redundancy money. Am I correct in that?
She has a formal meeting next week and is very worried as she doesn't know much about her rights.

Sorry for all the questions but could she be also asked to take holiday so it's lumped together as both notice period and holiday or does it have to be separate? I don't even know if that makes sense. I read that employers can make employees take holiday and include it as notice

@HippyHappygal

Sorry for all the questions but could she be also asked to take holiday so it's lumped together as both notice period and holiday or does it have to be separate? I don't even know if that makes sense. I read that employers can make employees take holiday and include it as notice

Yes, they can require her to take holiday during her notice period. They need to give twice as much notice to tell her to do this as the length of holiday they want her to take, so if they want her to take a week’s holiday they need to notify her two weeks beforehand.

Thank you. Considering there is now no job for her, she can't take holiday as nothing to take holiday from.
I guess they will get away with saying she must take some of the notice pay as holiday and lump it in together rather than paying them both separately.

There would be no reason to pay them separately, but yes if she’s on 12 weeks notice and (for example) is owed 2 weeks’ notice they’ll say 2 of those weeks are holiday. But if they have no work for her that means she’d still get 10 weeks’ pay without having to work it.

Ultimately though, it works out cheaper for them if they chose to do that?

Yes definitely, so they probably will in her case as she’s quite expensive in terms of both redundancy pay and notice pay.

Sorry if wasn't clear - the next step is for your niece to be given a written 'offer' of options.

This isn't correct or even particularly normal. PP I suspect you might have been through a redundancy process yourself rather than being a lawyer/HR professional? If so its important to realise that just because something happened to you, it doesn't mean that it will happen in every case.

Well, she went today and they were pretty persistent about her finding another role within the workplace. Told her to come up with some ideas and if they were not suitable, they would start the redundancy process.

@HippyHappygal

Well, she went today and they were pretty persistent about her finding another role within the workplace. Told her to come up with some ideas and if they were not suitable, they would start the redundancy process.

That’s not how it works! Employees whose roles are redundant don’t have to come up with “ideas”!

She should ask them for a list of available roles and say she is more than happy to discuss any they think may be suitable for her.

To be fair, I think they did,the ones I mentioned originally but which she did not feel were right for her. She was told to go away and think up anymore ideas and if they did not like them then it would be redundancy.

She can’t invent jobs for her to have though! Very odd thing for them to say really.

Is it a local authority leisure centre?