If a company is proposing to dismiss 20 or more employees at one establishment, it has a duty to give the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR) certain basic information about its proposals. BERR provides a standard form for this purpose, form HR1 (Redundancy links ).
The obligation to notify BERR applies whenever an employer is proposing to dismiss 20 or more employees for a reason that is unrelated to the individuals concerned. An employer would therefore need to notify BERR if it was, for example, considering dismissing employees in order to introduce new terms and conditions of employment.
The company must provide the appropriate employee representatives with a copy of the completed form HR1.
If 100 or more redundancies are proposed, form HR1 must be filed before giving notice to terminate employees on the grounds of redundancy, and at least 90 days in advance of the date when the first of these dismissals takes effect. If 20 to 99 redundancies are involved, form HR1 must be filed before giving notice to terminate employees on grounds of redundancy and at least 30 days in advance of the date when the first of those dismissals takes effect.