On 6 April 2026, the Employment Rights Act 2025 doubles the maximum protective award in collective redundancy cases. The ceiling moves from 90 to 180 days' pay per affected employee, uncapped. That is a change with significant practical consequences for any employer contemplating a restructuring in the next six weeks — and for any solicitor advising them.
Here is the calculation worth running. A protective award of 90 days' pay at median UK weekly earnings (approximately £650 gross) produces around £8,500 per employee. At 180 days, the same figure is £17,000. Applied to a workforce of 100 employees — a number that sits comfortably above the s.188 TULRCA threshold of 100 requiring 45 days' minimum consultation — maximum exposure doubles from approximately £850,000 to £1.7 million. That is not a theoretical sum. It has appeared in protective award claims already, and after April 6 it will appear more often.
When the clock starts
The obligation to consult crystallises when the employer first "proposes" collective dismissals — not when the decision is made, not when notices are sent. The tribunal jurisprudence on what amounts to a "proposal" is unforgiving: once a restructuring becomes sufficiently formed in the employer's thinking, the duty bites. Employers who want the benefit of completing a genuine 45-day minimum consultation before April 6 are, realistically, already behind the starting line. A consultation that has not begun today will not produce its first dismissals until mid-April at the earliest.
The group structure trap
For group clients, the doubling is compounded by a persistent structural error. The s.188 duty runs at the level of the employing entity. It cannot be discharged by a parent company or group-level consultation that nominally covers associated entities. Each employing entity must conduct its own process with its own elected representatives or recognised trade union.
This is not a new rule. It is, however, a rule tested with some regularity in group restructurings — where the practical assumption is that one group-level exercise covers all subsidiaries. That assumption produces protective award claims running in parallel across multiple employing entities. Where each entity employs a meaningful workforce and dismissals aggregate across the group, maximum exposure calculated entity by entity after April 6 can scale very quickly. The EAT confirmed both the entity-specific point and the forward-looking trigger in Micro Focus Ltd v Mildenhall [2025] EAT 188, decided on 19 December 2025 by Michael Ford, Deputy Judge of the High Court.
The historic dismissal question — resolved
Micro Focus also settles a question that had generated real uncertainty: whether prior dismissals at the same establishment count toward the 20-employee threshold. The EAT held that the s.188 trigger is purely prospective. When assessing whether 20 or more redundancies are proposed within a 90-day window, an employer counts forward from the date of proposal — not backward. The ECJ decision in UQ v Marclean Technologies SLU, sometimes relied on to support a retrospective aggregation approach, was held to concern only the definition of "collective redundancies" under Article 1 of the Collective Redundancies Directive, not the Article 2 obligation that s.188 TULRCA implements. For employers running rolling redundancy programmes — in retail, logistics, and professional services in particular — this is a material clarification in their favour.
Four things to do before April 6
- Recalibrate the exposure figure. Any advice note or risk analysis referencing the 90-day maximum should be updated. The instruction is simple: double the number at the bottom of the page. Failing to do so before issuing updated advice creates an obvious problem.
- Confirm entity structure. Before consultation begins, identify all employing entities within the group. Each must consult separately. The fact that HR sits at group level does not cure an entity-specific gap.
- Check the trigger date. The doubling applies to dismissals on or after 6 April 2026 — not to claims issued after that date. If dismissals occur before April 6, the 90-day regime applies even if the award is made later.
- Count forward, not back. Micro Focus [2025] EAT 188 confirms the threshold assessment is prospective: only the dismissals you are proposing to make in the next 90 days count. Prior dismissals at the same establishment do not aggregate into that calculation.
The collective redundancy framework has not changed. What has changed is the arithmetic. Briefings given to restructuring clients before the announcement of April 6 as the commencement date should be revisited. In most cases, the analysis will be the same. The number at the bottom of the page will not be.