I apologise for placing a personal problem on here but I am a long term member of this forum and would appreciate some help.
I have worked as the business manager of an academy for a little over two years. The academy has a shortfall of funds because it has too few pupils and too many teachers (neither of which is my fault) and is now making redundancies. My work has been transferred to another academy which is also part of the same company and I am being made redundant although there has been no competition as to which business manager should lose their job. That's not really my concern as I do not want to remain in this situation anyway.
However, when the redundancies, which also included some teachers, were announced, a number of documents were circulated and remain on the intranet. One of these was "The Reduction Timeline" (which has as its filename "Reduction Timeline Final"). This makes no differentiation between different types of staff or the members of staff themselves. The final entry on this sheet says, "Employment for redundant staff ends 30 April 2014." There has been no notification that this timeline has been changed.
On this coming Friday I have been notified that there is a redundancy meeting for me. At the end of the document it says, "Recommendation. Having considered all the above it is my recommendation that ___ is given notice of the termination of employment from 9 February 2014 at the end of his notice period and support for redeployment will begin immediately."
I queried this and was told:
"The sentence should read:
'Having considered all the above it is my recommendation that ___ is given notice of the termination of employment from 9 February 2014 (four weeks notice) and support for redeployment will begin immediately.'"
My question is, can the date that my employment ends be shortened unilaterally in this way? My representative has been informed that the date of 30 April only applies to those with a twelve weeks notice period, i.e. the teaching staff, but it is not stated anywhere that this is the case.
Secondly, the recommendation does not state anywhere that this is a redundancy, not a dismissal. Does this not need to be altered to protect my 5 weeks redundancy payment at the end of this period?
Once again, apologies for posting this but it is important to me and I do appreciate any advice that can be given.