What happens to my job if the business is sold?

The TUPE Regulations 2006 exist to stop a change of ownership being used to reset your rights. On a relevant transfer, your contract moves across to the new employer as it stands: same pay, same terms, same accrued rights. You do not resign and you are not re-hired.

When TUPE applies

Two situations are covered: a business transfer, where a business or part of one changes hands as a going concern; and a service provision change, where work is outsourced, brought back in-house, or moved between contractors. The service provision route requires an organised grouping of employees whose principal purpose is carrying out those activities — which can, in principle, be a single employee specifically assigned to the contract. Those cases turn on their facts, so take advice if you are the only person on a transferring contract.

Your protections, and their limits

• Terms cannot be worsened because of the transfer. Changes made for that reason are void even if you sign up to them. The exception is a genuine economic, technical or organisational (ETO) reason entailing changes in the workforce, and a fair process must still be followed.
• Transfer-related dismissal is automatically unfair — again, unless the employer proves an ETO reason. If redundancy follows shortly after a transfer, the burden is on the employer to show it was genuinely for such a reason rather than the transfer itself.
• You can object to transferring by telling your employer in writing before the transfer date — but the consequence is severe: your employment simply ends on that date and you are treated as having resigned, with no redundancy pay. Think hard before objecting.

Information and consultation

Both the outgoing and incoming employer must inform employee representatives — or, in businesses with fewer than ten employees, staff directly — of the fact of the transfer, its date, the reasons for it, the legal, economic and social implications for you, and any measures either employer envisages taking. That information must come long enough in advance for meaningful consultation, and failure to provide it is itself claimable. Where 20 or more redundancies are also proposed, the separate collective consultation duties apply on top.