We have three members of staff who are currently on fixed term/specific purpose contracts to cover for career break, long term sick leave and an ongoing role that we have not been able to recruit for a while. It has been suggested that once they have been with us for over two years they are entitled to a redundancy payment when their contract finishes. If the post is not made redundant, then does their contract finish as stated e.g. the fixed period or the specific purpose with no redundancy payment?

If you don’t want to renew these employees’ contracts, this will amount to a dismissal and if they have more than one year’s service they will have unfair dismissal rights. The question to ask, therefore, to help mitigate against the risk of an unfair dismissal claim, is what is the reason for the dismissal?

The reason must be one of the fair reasons of dismissal, which commonly in these circumstances is redundancy. If it is, the employer needs to follow a fair procedure (including the statutory dismissal procedures and use of fair selection criteria, if appropriate) and a statutory redundancy payment is due if the employee has at least two years’ service.

In other cases there may be a