Automatic transfer of employment and employee liability information

Covering Assessment Criterion 3.3 of 5OS01 Specialist Employment Law, this video addresses two closely linked dimensions of the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations: the automatic movement of employment to a transferee when a relevant transfer occurs, and the formal employee liability information obligations that the transferor must discharge before that transfer takes place. The video examines what transfers by operation of law — including contractual terms such as pay, hours, holidays and notice periods, accrued holiday entitlement, collective agreements, and liabilities that have accrued under the employment contract — alongside the specific categories of information that do not transfer, most notably occupational pension rights relating to old age, invalidity and survivors' benefits.

The employee liability information requirements receive detailed attention in the video, covering the mandatory written disclosures a transferor must make to the transferee no fewer than 28 days before the transfer date, including employee identity and age, written particulars of employment, disciplinary and grievance records from the preceding two years, details of actual or potential legal claims, and information about relevant collective agreements. The video also addresses what happens when special circumstances prevent timely disclosure, and how the duty to provide information as soon as reasonably practicable operates in those situations.

Remedies for non-compliance form the final substantive area the video covers, examining the employment tribunal's jurisdiction to award compensation where a transferor fails to meet the employee liability information obligation, including the minimum award of five hundred pounds per employee, the absence of a statutory upper limit, and the just and equitable principle that tribunals apply when determining the appropriate sum. Taken together, the three areas — automatic transfer, continuity of employment and its practical consequences for redundancy and unfair dismissal rights, and the liability information regime — map directly onto the indicative content for AC 3.3 and the main provisions of TUPE as a piece of specialist employment legislation.