The organisation is about to start a formal consultation to appoint at Head of Service level before commencing further consultation to restructure the remainder. An employee has been ‘acting up’ into a HoS role for over 18 months – similar to the proposed new Head of Service role – but has been told because the acting role is not his substantive position he cannot be ring-fenced to the new role and therefore cannot apply for the new position (another employee is being ring-fenced). This removes risk of redundancy – but the employee is challenging the ‘ring-fencing’ process. Is the organisation safe to exclude the ‘acting up’ employee from the next stage of restructure?