Well, the final letter of notification from my appeal has come back, and the original decision has been upheld - no eligibility for statutory redundancy payment. I'm going to be looking into my options for taking this to an employment tribunal. In the letter, they did not speak to my point raised in my final meeting that the contract should specifically state that in the case of PILON, all benefits should cease to accrue at the point of termination, for the contractual notice period not to count towards continuous service. Their position is that only statutory notice period counts, and since that is only one week in my case, I fall three weeks short of a full two years service, and thus am ineligible for any statutory redundancy payment. I have also tried speaking to ACAS, a local free law centre (they both told me I needed "real" legal advice) after that I tried a high street lawyer but was quickly rebuffed when I told them my budget for legal fees was £0. If anyone else reading this has been in a similar situation or has some background in this area, any advice or anecdotes would be very helpful. el Che - Thanks for the advice on "delaying" - if I could've thought of some way to push the day of redundancy back for three weeks, I might have just slipped under the wire, unf I'm not that clever - the HR person was after me like hotfire on the day, they weren't messing around. I've read other stories on the 'net of people being signed off sick for weeks at a time (after explaining their situation to a doctor) to push out their length of service, but in my case, 3 weeks was just a little bit too much to ask for.

As I stated above, there was no mention of the word "PILON" - but there is a clause in the contract that states that "If a payment is made to you by the company equivalent to the amount of pay you wouild have received if working that period, I agree to waive my right to notice for the period to which such payment relates". Question is, what rights exactly am I waiving? Another party has advised me that the contract should specifically state that in the case of PILON, all benefits should cease to accrue at the point of termination, for the contractual notice period not to count towards continuous service. My contract does not state that. I have read on another website that it is impossible for an employer to contract out of STATUTORY notice periods. Alas, since statutory notice is only two weeks, I would fall short of the two year barrier by 4 days and 1 week elche - you are right, the statutory minimum payment for me is two weeks pay, capped. In other words, next to nothing, but of course in times like these, better than nothing.

Thanks for your excellent replies. This is the answer I received from the company when asking about the redundancy payment (or lack of): Length of service is only extended, for purpose of qualifying for right to claim unfair dismissal (1 year) and SRP (2 years), by the amount of statutory notice due. Where an employee has more contractual notice entitlement, eg a month, even where if this were worked as opposed to there being early termination and a pilon paid, this notice period (even if not given) would not would extend termination date for SRP entitlement. There is a possibility of a breach of contract in some of these circumstances, but not where as in our case there is a pilon clause and so any early termination is lawful. -- Does this sound correct? There is reference made to a PILON clause, but I've carefully read my employment contract and there is no mention of PILON at all. I should add that I am under a TUPE arrangement, but my understanding of TUPE is that you are transferred under your existing contract, and I certainly have not seen or heard anything about a new contract or any amendments to my existing contract.

I have been told that I am being made redundant and am not eligible for statutory redundancy pay because I have not worked for two years continuous service. The redundancies have not yet been officially announced, and I have a one month contractual notice period. I worked out that the date the redundancies are likely to be announced (end of a consultation period), falls on a day that will be a few days more than one month before my two year anniversary at work. Question is, will the notice period given when the redundancies are announced count towards my length of continuous service, thereby pushing me over the two year mark necessary for the minimum statutory redundancy payment? What about if a payment is made "in lieu" of notice? Is the notice period still counted towards continuous service then? I have already raised the above with our head of HR, but I am still told that the notice period does not count towards my length of service. It quite clearly says on other websites that it does. Who is right?