[CleanupBarbie]

Hi. Was wondering if anyone ever accounts for potential redundacy costs if quoting or take costs as a loss.

I am a small contactor with handful of office shopping cleaning contracts and have 3 members of staff been with me for 3 to 9 years. Just occurreed to me I should consider possibility of being undercut and paying for it to boot.

Been reading about hourly rates charged with a lot of interest but redundancy costs are never mentioned.

Barbie

[Norbert]

Hi Cleanitup Barbie.

Just read your post, and I must say it raises some interesting questions for all contract cleaners. I personally would speak to my business accountant and solicitor regards the consequences of loosing a contract in this way. I would also seek advice from any trade association or local Business support agency, I belonged too. having done all of this, you will be in a much better and informed position, should you start to loose any contract in the future and armed with the latest information, you could maybe insert a TUPE clause in your cleaning contracts covering your ?  I've also pasted a link regards TUPE, from the governments own website https://www.gov.uk/transfers.../transfers-of-employment-contracts. The site gives a lot of information and should help you.

Good luck. Phil P.‎

[pristineclean]

TUPE will generally protect you from the costs of redundancy since liability for this transfers with all other employer responsibilities. My personal view is that having staff with long lengths of service is going to make potential competitors wary about taking on your contracts since the potential liabilities are so high. For your longer serving employees, redundancy is going to mount up to about 20 weeks pay including notice period.

The only times I would ever factor redundancy costs is either when taking someone on who has previously been working directly for councils or when I've accepted work from an LPA receiver for a business in administration when eventual redundancy is going to be inevitable.

Your post reminded me of a company who won a contract from me and asked me to confirm that I'd be paying the holiday pay up until the time of transfer :-) - very naughty but I guess they thought that it was worth a try..

[Griffus]

If they transfer under TUPE then redundancy will not apply.

If you need to consider redundancy then there's a useful tool here: -

https://www.gov.uk/calculate-your-redundancy-pay

[matthewpaul]

I had a TUPE issue very recently, however i was lucky it was a solicitors i was taking over, this is what he told me, If they cancel there curent contract due to not being happy with the cleaning standard, then they wait a week before my contract started TUPE would not be a issue, this is what we dont and it worked a treat.

[pristineclean]

I had a TUPE issue very recently, however i was lucky it was a solicitors i was taking over, this is what he told me, If they cancel there curent contract due to not being happy with the cleaning standard, then they wait a week before my contract started TUPE would not be a issue, this is what we dont and it worked a treat.

In relation to TUPE and other Employment claims, the 2013 reality is that most of us are unlikely to see claims from former employees since the fairly high cost of getting a hearing will dissuade the vast majority from pursuing any action following employment termination. 

That said, and at the risk of offending the poster which I genuinely don't want to do since it was a good faith post, this was a surprisingly irresponsible statement for a solicitor to make and there is plenty of  case law which demonstrates that a temporary cessation in activity absolutely does not allow TUPE to fall away. I don't think that most cleaning companies will now see many, if any, claims for the foreseeable future but I'd absolutely bet the house against someone attempting to defeat TUPE regs based on a gap beween service provision, and I'd say in particular if it appears to the ET to have been created for that purpose.

[pristineclean]

"In relation to TUPE and other Employment claims, the 2013 reality is that most of us are unlikely to see claims from former employees since the fairly high cost of getting a hearing will dissuade the vast majority from pursuing any action following employment termination."

There's something darkly amusing about the fact that I've just been notified of an impending ET claim, which means that as I was writing the above post the union were filing against me   - so much for my prediction powers...

[CleanupBarbie]

Thank you everyone for your advice. I was told TUPe didn't negate redundancy pay but links and agencies mentioned will def be ones I'll check out.

[Rosemary Bolton]

sorry but the solicitors were telling you a load of BS If there are no cleaners for a week the WORK still exists so TUPE definately applies

i am a member of peninsula which has massively helped me understand employment law I had exactly the same issue with a group of solicitors who were treating me like crap so I gave them one months notice and tehy accepted The cleaner left so I put a new guy in and they told me the day after I was no longer needed and my guy was sacked I told them as solicitors they should know better and checked it all with peninsula who said this indeed was a breach of tupe They waited a week then put a new firm in Although the guy did not have an unfair dismissal claim against the solcitors he did have a claim under breach of tupe and I encouraged him to apply to a tribunal This was before they bought in the £1000 upfront fee in July Peninsula said he had a watertight claim but he did not want to make a claim as he did not like causing bother. If I were him I would have claimed, they were the most obnoxious clients I have ever had and the only time I have ever quit a contract.