Letter to staff following a TUPE transfer

If you’re the transferee employer, you should write to all of the affected employees shortly after the TUPE transfer has taken place advising them of the transfer of their employment from the transferor employer to you and confirming their employment position.

TUPE transfer

Under the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 2006 (TUPE), where a relevant transfer of an undertaking takes place, those employees who are employed by the transferor employer, e.g. the seller of the business, immediately before the transfer automatically become the employees of the transferee employer, e.g. the buyer of the business, from the time of the relevant transfer, on the same terms and conditions of employment that they previously enjoyed, except that special rules apply to the transfer of occupational pension scheme rights. In addition, an employee’s period of continuous employment is not broken by a TUPE transfer. If you’re the transferee, you can’t pick and choose which employees to take on and neither can you dismiss employees just because the transfer has occurred. If you do and the employee has sufficient continuity of employment, it will be an automatically unfair dismissal. An employee can make a claim for unfair dismissal in these circumstances if they have been employed for two years or more. Our Letter to Staff Following a TUPE Transfer enables the transferee employer to write to all the affected employees advising them that the transfer has taken place under the provisions of TUPE and the date on which that happened. It makes clear that the employees are now employed by the transferee employer with their terms and conditions of employment, and their continuity of employment, intact. Issuing this letter also ensures that you comply with the requirement to notify employees in writing of amendments to their written statements of employment particulars within one month of the change (in this case, the change is to the identity of the employer). Always take legal advice where TUPE is an issue.