Redundancy on maternity leave, sick leave or a fixed-term contract: Your protections

Redundancy programmes are designed around the typical employee: at work, on a permanent contract, able to attend every meeting. A large minority of the people caught in this autumn's cuts are not in that position. They are on maternity leave, signed off sick, or eighteen months into a fixed-term contract that was supposed to become permanent. The law treats each of those situations differently, and in two of the three it gives you more protection than your colleagues have, not less.

This post sets out what those protections are, what they do not cover, how your pay is calculated when you are not on full pay, and what to do if the process ignores your situation. The rules below are the current ones for England, Scotland and Wales in September 2026, drawn from GOV.UK, Acas and the underlying legislation. Where the law changed recently, the date is given.

The rule that applies to all three

You can be made redundant while pregnant, on maternity leave, off sick or on a fixed-term contract. None of those situations makes you immune. What the law prohibits is being selected because of them. GOV.UK lists pregnancy, maternity, paternity and parental leave, disability, and part-time or fixed-term status among the reasons that make a selection automatically unfair or discriminatory, and a selection on those grounds can be challenged without the two-year qualifying period that ordinary unfair dismissal claims currently require.

Your statutory redundancy pay is also unaffected. It is calculated on your normal weekly pay before you went on leave, not on statutory sick pay or maternity pay, using the same formula as everyone else: half a week, one week or one and a half weeks' pay per year of service depending on age, capped at £751 a week and 20 years for dismissals from 6 April 2026, for a maximum of £22,530. The calculator post works through the formula. What differs between the three situations is the protection around selection, the pay during notice, and the extra entitlements that survive the dismissal.

Pregnancy, maternity and family leave: the strongest protection in the process

Since 6 April 2024, the Protection from Redundancy (Pregnancy and Family Leave) Act 2023 and its regulations give a protected period that runs from the day you tell your employer you are pregnant until 18 months after the child's birth. The same 18-month protection applies from the date of placement for adoption leave, and to shared parental leave of six or more continuous weeks. Neonatal care leave and bereaved partner's paternity leave are also covered. If shared parental leave is shorter than six weeks, protection ends on the last day of the leave.

During the protected period the protection is specific and practical. If your role is redundant and a suitable alternative vacancy exists anywhere in the employer or its group, you must be offered it, ahead of anyone else who might be suitable, and without a competitive interview. The employer does not have to create a role. It does have to look, offer what it finds, and document that it did so. Dismissing a protected employee without doing this is automatically unfair dismissal and, in most cases, pregnancy or maternity discrimination, which carries uncapped compensation.

Two points on money. Statutory maternity pay is not conditional on remaining employed: if you qualified for it, you receive the full 39 weeks even after a redundancy takes effect, on top of your redundancy pay. Enhanced contractual maternity pay depends on your contract, and employers can offset statutory maternity pay against contractual notice pay and enhanced redundancy pay on a week-by-week basis, though never against statutory redundancy pay. Ask for the schedule of payments in writing so that the offset is visible.

Consultation must also adapt to you. An employer that holds all its meetings while you are on leave and cannot attend, or that relies on you missing an internal vacancy list, has not consulted properly. You are entitled to be kept informed, to attend meetings or be consulted in another way, and to be told about vacancies in the same way as colleagues at work. Keeping-in-touch days can be used for meetings if you agree, but you cannot be required to use them.

Sick leave: you keep the process, and sometimes full notice pay

Being off sick does not pause a redundancy programme, and it does not exclude you from it. You keep your continuous service, your right to be consulted and your statutory redundancy pay on your normal weekly pay. The employer must make reasonable arrangements to consult you, which may mean meetings by phone or video, meetings at home, written consultation or a later date. If your absence is connected to a disability, the employer has a separate duty to make reasonable adjustments to the process, and an attendance criterion that counts disability-related absence against you is discriminatory.

Notice pay is where the detail matters, because it can be worth several weeks of full salary. Under sections 87 and 88 of the Employment Rights Act 1996, if your contractual notice period is the same as the statutory minimum, or less than one week longer than it, you are entitled to full normal pay for the statutory notice period even though you are off sick and even if your sick pay has run out. If your contract gives you at least one week more than statutory notice, the rule does not apply and you receive whatever your contract provides for sickness during that period.

Statutory sick pay itself changed on 6 April 2026. It is now paid from the first day of sickness, with no waiting days, at the lower of £123.25 a week or 80% of average weekly earnings, and the lower earnings limit that excluded low earners has been removed. If you are dismissed while on sick pay, it stops with the employment, which is one reason the notice pay rule above matters.

Fixed-term contracts: expiry is a dismissal

The most common misunderstanding on fixed-term contracts is that when the end date arrives, nothing happens legally. In fact the expiry and non-renewal of a fixed-term contract is a dismissal in law. If the reason for not renewing is that the work has ended or reduced, the dismissal is by reason of redundancy, and if you have two years' continuous service, including across successive contracts with the same employer, you are entitled to statutory redundancy pay. Clauses that try to waive redundancy pay in fixed-term contracts have been invalid since October 2002.

The Fixed-term Employees Regulations 2002 also prevent you being treated less favourably than a comparable permanent employee, which includes being selected for redundancy because you are on a fixed term. A contract that has been renewed for four years or more normally becomes permanent unless the employer can objectively justify keeping it fixed. There is one gap: GOV.UK notes that fixed-term employees can be left out of collective consultation unless the employer is ending the contract early because of redundancy, so you may have to rely on individual consultation and on your own questions.

What to do in each situation

If the employer gets it wrong

All three situations carry claims that do not need two years' service: automatically unfair dismissal for pregnancy or family leave, discrimination on grounds of pregnancy, maternity or disability, and less favourable treatment as a fixed-term employee. Use the internal appeal first, then Acas early conciliation. The time limit for most tribunal claims is currently three months less one day, rising to six months for events on or after 1 October 2026 under the Employment Rights Act 2025.

The practical point is simpler than the law. In each situation the employer's obligations are triggered by facts it may not have in front of it: the date you notified your pregnancy, the wording of your notice clause, the run of contracts that adds up to two years. Put those facts in writing early, and the process usually corrects itself before a claim is needed.

This is general information, not legal advice. Family leave, sickness and fixed-term rules depend on your contract, your dates and your employer's policies, and the law is changing through 2026 and 2027. Take independent advice on any process you are in, and check GOV.UK and Acas for the current rules.

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