Redundancy protective award UK 2026 Acas early conciliation guide

Two changes, one expensive blind spot

Two changes have landed this year that most hospitality and retail business owners haven't fully clocked, and both carry a real cost if you're caught out: the redundancy protective award, and the extended Acas early conciliation window.

What is the redundancy protective award?

The protective award is the penalty a tribunal can order when an employer fails to properly consult before collective redundancies. It applies specifically where 20 or more employees are being made redundant at one establishment within a 90-day period, the point at which collective consultation duties kick in under the current rules.

From 6 April 2026, the maximum award doubled from 90 days' actual gross pay to 180 days' pay, per affected employee. For a business making 20 staff redundant on an average wage of £550 a week, getting the consultation process wrong could now mean a bill approaching £280,000 across the group, not for making the redundancies themselves, but for the process failure around them.

A further change is expected in 2027: an organisation-wide threshold that may see redundancies across multiple sites added together when assessing whether the 20-employee trigger has been met at all. For a hospitality or retail group with several venues, that matters, a round of cuts spread across three sites that individually look too small to trigger collective consultation could, under the new rule, be counted together.

What changed with Acas early conciliation

Acas early conciliation is the compulsory first step before almost any employment tribunal claim can be lodged. Since December 2025, the conciliation window has doubled too, from 6 weeks to 12. If you receive contact from Acas, it doesn't mean a claim has been lodged, it means one might be, and there's now a longer window than most employers expect to try to resolve things first.

The most common mistake with an Acas contact is one of two extremes: going quiet and hoping it disappears, or panicking and offering a settlement figure far higher than the situation justifies. Neither is the right instinct. Engaging with Acas isn't an admission of anything, and taking a beat to get a second opinion before you reply costs nothing but a phone call.

What to do next

If you've got any restructuring on the horizon this year, particularly across more than one site, or you've had contact from Acas about a current or former employee, the sensible move is the same in both cases: get your paperwork in order, and talk it through with someone who does this for a living before you put anything in writing.

TurlandHR offers a free 30-minute discovery call for hospitality and retail business owners, no sales pitch. Get in touch to book one.

Download a free Hopitality and Retail Checklist for the Employment Rights Act 2026 Here