The chief legislation that governs transfer of employment – TUPE (Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 2006) – is due to be amended from 31 January 2014.

Notable changes:

• The definition of “service provision change” in Regulation 3(1)(b) is amended so that “activities” means activities which are “fundamentally the same” as activities that were carried out previously.
• A variation of the contract of employment is permitted post-transfer if the reason for the variation is the transfer, provided the terms of the contract permit variation.
• Contract terms derived from collective agreement can be varied after one year provided employees are not worse off.
• Dismissal is automatically unfair if the reason for the dismissal is the transfer itself, not a reason connected with the transfer.
• For the purposes of contract variation and dismissals, the definition of “change in the workforce” now includes a change of location.
• The deadline by which the transferor must provide the transferee with certain information about the transferring employees (“employee liability information”) changes from 14 days before transfer to 28 days before transfer.  This rule applies to transfers that take place three months after the amended Regulations come into force, i.e. from 1 May 2014.
• Where the transferee is proposing to make 20 or more employees redundant following the transfer, the transferee can now begin consultation with representatives of the affected employees prior to the transfer taking place.  However, this pre-transfer consultation can only be done if the transferor agrees to it.
• Micro-businesses that employ fewer than 10 employees can inform and consult directly with each employee provided the business has no appropriate employee representatives.  This rule applies to transfers that take place six months after the amended Regulations come into force, i.e. from 1 August 2014.

The changes are enshrined in a new piece of legislation called Collective Redundancies and Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) (Amendment) Regulations 2014.