If more people are at risk than are going, somebody has to decide who stays. Most employers do that with a scoring matrix: a list of criteria, a score against each, and a line drawn somewhere down the ranked list.
The matrix is usually presented as though it were arithmetic. It is not. Almost every criterion involves a judgement, and judgements can be wrong, inconsistent or influenced by things that have no business being in the decision. This explains how selection is supposed to work and where to push. It is general information rather than legal advice, and if you think you have a claim, take proper advice quickly.
First, the Pool
Before anyone is scored, the employer defines the selection pool: the group of employees the redundancies will be drawn from. This is decided before scoring and it often decides the outcome.
Draw the pool narrowly, around one team or even one role, and the people in it are competing only with each other. Draw it widely, across everyone doing interchangeable work, and the field changes completely.
Employers have some latitude here, but the pool has to be genuinely reasoned. Questions worth asking in consultation:
- Why does the pool stop where it does?
- Are there people outside it doing substantially the same work?
- Have people who could do your job, or whose job you could do, been left out?
- Is the pool drawn around a single individual? A pool of one needs a very good explanation.
A pool constructed so that the person the employer wanted to remove is the only realistic candidate is one of the clearest indicators of a predetermined outcome.
Criteria that are normally acceptable
Selection has to be fair and objective, and criteria should be capable of being evidenced rather than resting on someone's impression. The ones tribunals see most often are:
- Skills, qualifications and experience relevant to the future shape of the business
- Standard of work, evidenced by appraisals or objective performance data
- Attendance record, with important exceptions covered below
- Disciplinary record, usually live warnings only
- Length of service, as one factor among several
- Flexibility or adaptability, where it can actually be evidenced
The more a criterion depends on someone's opinion, the more the employer needs to show how the score was reached. "Attitude", "team fit" and "potential" are where unfair selections hide, because they cannot be checked.
Criteria that are not acceptable
Selection must not be influenced by a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010: age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, or sexual orientation.
That covers indirect effects, not only explicit ones. A criterion that looks neutral but disadvantages a protected group can still be discriminatory unless the employer can objectively justify it.
Some grounds make a dismissal automatically unfair regardless of length of service, including selection because of trade union membership or activities, whistleblowing, raising a health and safety concern, asserting a statutory right, or pregnancy and maternity. Part-time and fixed-term employees also have specific protection against less favourable treatment.
Three criteria that go wrong constantly. Attendance, where disability-related absence and pregnancy-related absence should be discounted rather than scored against you. Last in, first out used on its own, which correlates strongly with age and is difficult to justify as a sole criterion. And flexibility, where scoring someone down for not working late or not travelling can indirectly discriminate against carers and disabled employees.
Getting Your Scores
Ask for them, in writing, during consultation. You are entitled to know why you are provisionally selected, and a consultation in which you cannot see the reason is not a meaningful one.
Ask for four things:
- The full list of criteria and the weighting given to each
- Your score against each criterion
- The evidence or reasoning behind each score
- The scoring guidance given to the managers who did it
You will usually be given your own scores and refused everyone else's, which is a reasonable position for an employer to take on other people's data. You can still ask for the anonymised range and the cut-off point, so you know how far away from safety you were. A gap of half a point is a different conversation from a gap of twenty.
If your employer will not provide your own scores at all, that in itself is worth putting on the record in writing.
Where the errors actually are
Having read a lot of these, the recurring problems are mundane rather than dramatic.
The scorer did not know your work. Restructures often put a new manager in place who scores people they have supervised for six weeks. Ask who scored you and on what basis.
Appraisals contradict the scores. If you have three years of strong appraisals and a low score for standard of work, the employer has to explain the inconsistency. This is the single most effective challenge available to most people.
The scoring window is unrepresentative. Scoring on the last twelve months when you spent five of them on family leave, sick leave or covering someone else's job produces a distorted result.
Absence has been counted wrongly. Disability-related absence, pregnancy-related absence and statutory leave should not be scored against you.
Different managers scored different people. Without moderation, one manager's 3 is another's 5, and the ranking is then meaningless.
Nobody checked the arithmetic. Weighted matrices are usually built in a spreadsheet by someone in a hurry. Add up your own row.
How to put the challenge
Do it in writing, criterion by criterion, and keep it factual. A general assertion that the process is unfair is easy to absorb. A specific challenge with evidence attached is not.
For each score you dispute, state the score, state what you say the evidence shows, and attach it: appraisal extracts, project outcomes, emails of thanks, sales figures, training certificates. Ask for the score to be reconsidered and for a written response.
Raise it during consultation rather than after the decision. An employer who reconsiders and adjusts a score during the process is fixing a problem. An employer defending a completed exercise at a tribunal is defending a position, and the outcome is worse for everyone.
Collective consultation changes the picture
Where 20 or more redundancies are proposed at one establishment within 90 days, collective consultation is required: at least 30 days before the first dismissal for 20 to 99 redundancies, and at least 45 days for 100 or more. The employer must consult union or elected employee representatives, and must notify the Redundancy Payments Service.
Getting this wrong is expensive. A protective award for failure to consult properly can now be up to 180 days' pay per affected employee for cases from 6 April 2026, having previously been capped at 90 days. That is a separate award, on top of redundancy pay, and it makes proper consultation something employers have a strong financial reason to get right.
Selection is not the end of the process
Even after scoring, the employer has a continuing duty to look for suitable alternative employment for you, across the organisation and any associated companies, right up to the dismissal date.
If you are offered an alternative role you get a trial period of at least four weeks. If you try it genuinely and it is not suitable, you can leave within the trial and keep your redundancy pay. Turning down a suitable offer without good reason can cost you the payment entirely, so if you are inclined to refuse, put the reasons in writing at the time.
If it still looks wrong
Appeal internally if there is an appeals process, and use it, because tribunals look at whether you raised the issue when you could have.
Beyond that, an unfair dismissal claim currently needs two years' continuous service, though the automatically unfair grounds listed earlier and discrimination claims do not require any qualifying period at all. You must notify Acas for early conciliation before starting a tribunal claim.
On timing: the limit for unfair dismissal has been three months less one day from the date your employment ended, and it is being extended to six months from 1 October 2026, with transitional rules about which claims the longer period covers. Because you cannot safely assume which applies to you, treat three months less one day as your working deadline and get advice early rather than close to it. Acas is free and impartial on 0300 123 1100.