NHS employer reversed upheld grievance and changed service date before redundancy

[Tanya78]

Posting for advice. I applied for voluntary redundancy with an NHS organisation. Last year I raised a formal grievance about my reckonable service date. HR reviewed evidence, upheld the grievance, and changed my date in ESR.

My voluntary redundancy estimate was based on that date and was completely accurate.

Now, at the settlement agreement stage, HR have reversed the grievance outcome, said it was “an error” and “done in good faith”, claimed they “don’t use discretion”, and then changed my ESR date again — dropping it even further than the original incorrect date. This has caused a large financial loss.

Is this allowed? Can an NHS employer overturn an upheld grievance a year later, call it an error, and then reduce the date even more? Has anyone experienced anything similar?

I would be very surprised if they had not extensively consulted legal dept before doing this to confirm that within the law

I am confused about the service date. Presumably you've changed organisations? Surely you have some contract or something that supports the date?
Ultimately reckonable service is based on facts. If you had a gap in service over a certain time then it resets, if you didn't then it doesn't. If there was an error then it needs to be corrected either way.

is a Settlement Agreement not different to vr, usually where disciplinary or long term sickness is involved? Did you have continuous service or any break in employment?

Not sure if you are aware of the guidelines or in a union but the criteria for reckonable service is detailed in Section 16 of the NHS T&C’s of service. It’s on the NHS Employers website
https://www.nhsemployers.org/articles/nhs-redundancy-arrangements.
Is there some dispute around breaks in service or previous redundancies etc as previous redundancies will affect your new redundancy criteria/entitlement? If you’re a union member then I would recommend you seek advice from your Rep. Good luck.

Given some of the employment cases that NHS have lost, I wouldn’t be too sure on that.

Thank you for your responses

Just to clarify — the organisation had already accepted my previous employment as reckonable service. The formal grievance I raised over 8 months ago was because they later changed my service date in ESR without any consultation, and I needed it to be correct before applying for voluntary redundancy once the scheme opened.

That grievance was upheld, and under Section 16 of the NHS Terms & Conditions Handbook my previous employment was recognised as reckonable service. The organisation applied discretion, corrected my ESR, and confirmed the earlier start date.

They had originally stated in the grievance response that they ‘do not recognise non‑NHS service’, which confused me because I had always believed my previous employment counted. If I had been told at the point of joining that it would not be recognised, I would never have left my previous job.

However, because they accepted they had made an error, they confirmed they would honour my previous employment as reckonable service. That corrected date remained in place for months and was used for the voluntary redundancy estimate and the draft settlement agreement — so the estimate issued 8 months later was still based on the same, correct service date.

After issuing that correct estimate, the organisation then reversed the decision and removed the reckonable service. This drastically reduced the payment and caused further financial detriment.

I then went through a further grievance about the reversal. The outcome report upheld my grievance again and acknowledged the error, the reliance and the detriment — but still offered no remedy, leaving me worse off than before.

My grievance appeal has also offered no remedy or explanation, so the matter is now going to ACAS Early Conciliation.

So the issue isn’t simply the factual service date — it’s that the organisation applied discretion under Section 16, upheld it formally, used it for the estimate for 8 months, and then reversed it afterwards, causing significant further detriment and offering no remedy despite upholding the grievance.

Gosh sounds very complicated and difficult OP. I'm guessing you had some employment prior to your current job that was analogous or related to NHS employment but not actually NHS employment, hence the use of employers' discretion? It must be a very particular and personal circumstance.

Really I think you need to rely on your own legal/union advice as the advice on these boards is variable at best and awful at worst and without you disclosing the full details which I don't advise you to do the advice will certainly be wonky. The only thing I can say in general is that whenever I've dealt with public sector VR schemes the T&Cs are always very clear that the estimates are only ever estimates and final payments may vary once payroll have done their bit and depending on final verification of things like service history - I've dealt with some horrendous cases where people have been led to believe they'll be getting huge payouts that end up being much reduced in the end - I always do feel very sorry for those people because however much you say the estimate is just an estimate of course people rely on it, what else are they supposed to do, and of course they don't expect it to vary by thousands or tens of thousands of pounds. But in your case having gone through two different grievance processes and having written confirmation they'd use X date it does sound very hard that they've changed their mind. Is reinstatement in employment something you'd consider as a remedy at this point or would you only take money?

Frankly if you are already going to ACAS then I'd just go through that. There's very little else we could suggest on this forum tbh

I appreciate you taking the time to reply — it’s useful to understand how these things usually work.

We don’t have any TUPE options in place yet, but if TUPE does happen, I could potentially be moved to a location over two hours away from where I live. That was a genuine concern for me, and I was trying to minimise the risk by choosing voluntary redundancy while it was still an option. Realistically, that option may not even exist long‑term and most of us expect to be made redundant anyway, so I was trying to make the best decision based on the information I had at the time.

I now have no option but to stay because I can’t afford to leave on the reduced figure, and as I’m not in a union I’ll have to represent myself going forward.

The biggest issue for me is that my records have been changed multiple times without any consultation. After two upheld grievances and written confirmation that they would use the corrected date, they still reversed it. The grievance outcome changed my service date drastically, which has caused further harm rather than any kind of remedy.

The inconsistency has left me feeling completely unsupported, and it’s very hard to trust the process when decisions keep being changed instead of resolved. I just wondered if anyone else had been through something similar, as it feels very lonely when you’re not able to talk to anyone about it.

I have to say I've never heard of the discretion being applied to reckonable service. I've seen people go top of band or whatever based on their experience but never that it was credited as service.
Sorry OP I don't have much more advice

There is no discretion available re reckonable service when it comes to redundancy. It's different for things like annual leave allowance or placing on point of salary scale where discretion can be used to include non NHS but equivalent service. It's unfortunate, but your redundancy payment will be based on NHS employment only.

I was thinking similarly. If the place of work for the role is changed significantly you may still be eligible for redundancy.

They aren’t “your records”. They are your employer’s record of your employment. And they have a responsibility to ensure they are correct.

I can’t understand (as an ex-NHS HR person) how your previous service was agreed to be reckonable based on Agenda for Change terms and now isn’t.

Ah, this makes sense.