Major changes to collective redundancy law will come into force between 2026 and 2027, significantly strengthening protections for employees facing redundancy. The changes will affect how production companies, post-production facilities, broadcasters, and other screen industry businesses handle larger-scale redundancies.
Here we’ll explain what collective redundancy means, who it applies to, what’s changing, when the changes take effect, and what you may need to do differently.
When this threshold is met, special legal obligations kick in. You must:
Collectively consult with employee representatives (usually trade union reps or elected employee representatives) before making anyone redundant. This means discussing the proposals with representatives who speak on behalf of all the affected employees as a group. You don't consult with each individual employee. The representatives then feed back to the wider workforce); and
Notify the Government (via the Insolvency Service) about the proposed redundancies using form HR1 before you give notice to terminate anyone’s contract. Failing to notify is a criminal offence and could result in prosecution and an unlimited fine.
The consultation must start at least 30 days before the first dismissal (for 20–99 redundancies) or 45 days (for 100 or more).
To be clear, the aim of this consultation is to explore ways to avoid redundancies altogether, reduce numbers of redundancies, or mitigate consequences of the redundancies and the impact on affected staff.
And you must consult with a view to reaching agreement. It isn’t just a tick-box exercise. A business needs to engage genuinely with the process and consider what the representatives say.
If you fail to follow the rules properly, employees can take you to an Employment Tribunal (the type of court that hears employment related cases), which can order you to pay a ‘protective award’ – essentially compensation for the failure to consult. Currently, this can be up to 90 days’ pay per affected employee (BUT read on…).
(In 2022/23, Employment Tribunals received 5,026 claims relating to failures to inform and consult on redundancies)
Like Statutory Sick Pay, collective redundancy obligations only apply to employees (by which we mean people who work under a contract of employment, where you deduct tax and National Insurance through the payroll - PAYE).
Self-employed freelancers
Workers (that specific legal status between employee and self-employed)
Agency staff or contractors engaged through third parties
Remember that collective redundancy rules only apply to employees. If you regularly use freelance crew on short contracts for productions, those aren’t covered by collective redundancy law (though of course you may still have other contractual or legal obligations to them).
And as we’ve said elsewhere, do be careful about employment status. If people you call ‘freelancers’ are actually employees in legal terms (because of how you control their work, the level of integration into your business, etc.), collective redundancy rules could apply to them.
So if you’re ending contracts with 20 freelancers, you don’t need to worry about the collective redundancy rules, just the termination provisions in the contract. But if you’re making 20 employees redundant you must follow the collective consultation process.
Fixed-term employee contracts that simply expire (where redundancy wasn’t the reason for ending them) may not sometimes count as redundancies for collective consultation purposes. The rules are technical and fact-specific: do get specialist advice if you’re unsure.
The maximum protective award – what a tribunal can order you to pay if you fail to properly consult – will double from 90 days’ pay to 180 days’ pay per affected employee. This is meant to deter employers from deliberately ignoring their consultation obligations. Tribunals can still decide to award less than the maximum if there were genuine attempts to comply or some mitigating circumstances, but the potential penalty for non-compliance is now much steeper.
At the moment, the 20-employee threshold applies per establishment (i.e. per workplace or site). This has allowed some employers to play the rules by making many redundancies across multiple sites without triggering collective consultation, as long as each individual site has fewer than 20 redundancies.
But from 2027, there will be an additional organisation-wide threshold. This means if you propose redundancies that meet or exceed a certain number across your entire organisation within a 90-day period, you’ll need to collectively consult – even if no single workplace reaches 20 redundancies.
The principle is that if you’re making substantial redundancies across the business as a whole, you’ll need to consult collectively and both thresholds will apply.
Review your redundancy procedures now so if you currently have procedures for handling collective redundancies, ensure they’re robust. The doubling of the protective award means the cost of getting it wrong is much higher from April.
Map your employee locations if you operate multiple sites, to understand how many employees work at each location and how the business is structured. This will help to assess whether the new organisation-wide threshold might affect you.
Watch for the results of the Government’s consultation on the organisation-wide threshold number. That process will determine how the new rules affect your business.
Update your restructuring planning if you’re considering redundancies in 2026 or beyond, and factor in longer consultation timelines if the organisation-wide threshold is triggered, the need to coordinate consultation across multiple sites and much higher potential costs if you don’t comply properly.
Where to get further information
The Government has published detailed information on collective redundancy, including guidance on collective redundancy obligations, the Employment Rights Act 2025 factsheets and details of the current consultation on the organisation-wide threshold.
ACAS (the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service) also provides guidance on redundancy and consultation.
If you’re planning redundancies that might trigger collective redundancy obligations, get employment law advice before you start the process: the rules are complex and the consequences of non-compliance are significant.