Does anyone know if this is legal? (Redundancy related)

[SapphosRock]

I've worked at my company over 4 years.

Went on maternity leave in March 2020

The business was badly hit by covid, and there were a lot of redundancies last year. I wasn't affected.

I was due to return in March 2021 but the business was still struggling. I offered to take a further 6 months unpaid leave with a view to retuning in September 2021. All fine.

I then spotted on LinkedIn my colleague (who I used to line manage) is now officially doing my role.

While I was on unpaid leave colleague employed a junior exec to do his old role.

Found out last week I am being made redundant and HR are extremely keen for me to sign a settlement agreement ASAP.

Is this legal? It seems dodgy to me but I'm not sure if it's worth pursuing or not.

@SapphosRock

Just to update, after a lot of negotiation we finally settled on 6 months full pay + the standard redundancy package.

HR eventually acknowledged that I had a case for unfair dismissal and were willing to increase the settlement to avoid it.

Happy with that!

My work paid the solicitors fee

They have to contribute to the solicitor fees for a settlement.