Every operator dreads it: the lost contract, the depot consolidation, the trunking run taken over by a bigger player’s network. When the work goes, the question of what happens to the drivers arrives fast. Redundancy is the lawful route, but only when it is genuine - and “genuine” is a legal test, not a mood.
GOV.UK’s redundancy overview defines it plainly: redundancy is when you dismiss an employee because you no longer need anyone to do their job. The page lists the shapes this takes in a business - changing what it does, doing things in a different way (the example given is using new machinery), changing location or closing down. A depot move from one side of a county to another, a warehouse automated, a contract lost to a competitor: all can be real redundancy situations.
The critical line follows immediately: for a redundancy to be genuine, you must demonstrate that the employee’s job will no longer exist. Not that you would prefer a cheaper driver, not that you want to swap an older employee for an agency one - the job itself must be going. If the work still exists and you simply want different people doing it, that is not redundancy, and calling it redundancy does not make it so.
The overview distinguishes compulsory from non-compulsory redundancies. Non-compulsory routes - asking for volunteers, offering early retirement, agreeing moves - come first in practice and often thin the numbers before anyone is selected. Where compulsory selection is needed, the process has to be run fairly, and the page points employers to the fuller guidance on consultations and selection. It also notes that Jobcentre Plus can help if you have to make redundancies - a genuinely useful service most operators never think to use.
Employees under notice of redundancy have rights - the overview lists them, including time off tied to the redundancy situation. Treat notice as a managed period, not a dead one: drivers working out notice are still your drivers, still representing your O-licence compliance, and still owed every protection the notice period carries. The operator who goes cold on staff the moment notices are issued creates a safety and morale problem in exactly the weeks the operation needs steadiness.
One detail deserves its own paragraph because it is so often missed: employees can try out an alternative role for 4 weeks - or more if agreed in writing - without giving up their right to redundancy pay. In a fleet with varied work this is a gift. The trunking driver whose night run disappears can try the multidrop round; the depot-based shunter can try yard work at the surviving site. If the alternative role works, nobody was dismissed at all. If it does not, within the trial rules, the redundancy entitlement survives intact.
Make the trial explicit: write down the alternative role, the trial length, and the agreement to extend beyond 4 weeks if you both want longer. The written record is what keeps a genuine try-out from mutating into an argument about whether the driver “accepted” a new job.
Statutory redundancy pay has its own rules - age, length of service and weekly pay all feed the entitlement - and GOV.UK publishes a dedicated guide and calculator for working out what each employee is owed. Do not estimate it from memory or from what a colleague’s firm paid last year; the figures move, the service-length bands matter, and the difference between a careful calculation and a guess is a claim. Where enhanced redundancy terms exist in contracts or handbooks, those apply on top of the statutory floor - check the paperwork you issued, not just the statutory tables.
Transport adds a wrinkle other industries lack: a depot closure or fleet reduction that triggers redundancies may also change what your O-licence authorises and what your transport manager oversees. Run the two conversations in parallel - the employment process for the people and the regulatory housekeeping for the licence - so the operation you are shrinking toward is itself compliant. A redundancy programme that accidentally leaves the surviving operation outside its licence conditions has traded one problem for a worse one.
Work from the definition backwards. Establish that the job genuinely ceases to exist - board minutes, the lost contract letter, the depot closure decision, whatever evidences it. Look for alternatives across the whole operation, and use trial periods properly. Run a fair selection if compulsory choices remain. Give notice with all the rights that attach, honour the pay calculations, and keep every step documented. Redundancy done lawfully is painful; redundancy done casually is painful plus a tribunal.