Anyone know about employment contract law?

[Hathor]

I have a contract of employment and am under threat of possible redundancy. The clause about redundancy is in the Employee Handbook, which forms part of my contract terms.
But looking at the details, I have found that in this Employee Handbook the redundancy terms were changed without my notice a few months ago (when they issued my latest copy of the contract) reducing the redundancy to statutory minimum. This change was not pointed out or discussed with me.

Is my employer in breach of contract, and, if so, what can I do about it in order to get the contract changed back to the original redundancy clause terms?
I don't want to get into trouble for raising this at work. Anyone have any knowledge of this?

Did you sign the contract? You did know you were issued with a new contract. Why did you not read it at the time?

I would think (but don't have any prof. knowledge) that either by a) signing the new contract or b) continuing to work once the new contract was issued some months ago, that you are deemed to have accepted the changes. I don't think you would be able to argue that the employer is in breach of contract, because you either explicitly or implicitly agreed to the terms of the contract, even if you were actually unaware of the finer details.

impossible to say without more detail. just because your contract refers to the employee handbook doesn't mean everything in the handbook is contractual. Also, the previous policy may have had a clause in it about being able to vary terms. Even if it was contractual, then it may be reasonable to change the terms if the cost was prohibitive. do you have any more info?

They are not in breach of contract because the existing contract says statutory minimum.

If you are issued with a new contract you do need to check it before you sign it and raise any issues you are concerned about. As you didn't, this is the contract that is in force currently.

Your employer is supposed to consult with you, or employee representatives, on any change they want to make to your contract (assuming the previous redundancy terms were indeed contractual), and they may not have done that. But on the other hand, you can't just decide months later that actually no you are not happy with one of the terms of your contract just because it is now coming into effect. It is reasonable of your employer to say that you had every opportunity to read and understand your contract before you signed it, so you are not in a good situation.

You could protest at the way the change was introduced, but the bottom line is if a change to a contractual terms is made for good business reasons, which something like this usually is, then after a lot of to-ing and fro-ing, it is perfectly possible for an employer to force it through anyway.