Further to my earlier blogs, the draft Collective Redundancies and Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) (Amendment) Regulations 2013 have been published.  They will be laid before Parliament in December and are expected to come into force in the New Year and will mostly affect transfers after this date. There are some transitional provisions relating to the time limit for providing employee liability information and information and consultation for small businesses.

As a reminder the main changes to TUPE will be:

• Allowing collective agreement terms to be renegotiated for up to one year post transfer;
• Allowing microbusinesses to consult directly with affected staff;
• Permitting consultation (with the transferor’s written consent)  to start prior to transfer and count towards the collective redundancy consultation obligations;
• Clarifying that a service provision changeover only occurs where the transferring activities are fundamentally the same;
• Provision for post transfer changes to location to amount to an ETO reason for dismissal and variations to contract)

Guidance is expected in due course but the biggest changes will be in the pre-transfer conciliation for collective redundancies and for micro businesses.