How long after taking voluntary redundancy can you go back to a company

[mgangie]

I was made redundant in July as a Supervisor in a call centre. I took voluntary in the end.

They have recently started taking on helpdesk agents and I would like to go back and work there over xmas, they said they would like me to go back.

Does anyone know how long after taking voluntary redundancy you have to wait before you can go back to the company?

Thanks!

[buildersmate]

There is no legal constraint on this from your point-of-view.
If a company is that stupid as to make staff voluntarily redundant and then have to start re-employing again after a relatively short time, it is their look-out.
The issue is usually the other way around, whereby a peaved, redundant employee wishes to consider taking the employer to Employment Tribunal on grounds that a true redundancy has not in fact occurred (because the employer is recruiting staff again). In that situation an employer has to leave a gap of 3 months since the redundancies before re-emplying staff - as that is the time limit by which an employee has to register a claim at the ET.

[factor-fiction]

Hi BM- good answer as always.
I was wondering though whether HMRC could have any issues about the tax free status of the first £30K of redundancy payments in a situation where someone is reemployed within a short period into the same company.

[buildersmate]

They might well do - particularly if they suspect it could be a tax/NI avoidance scheme - because (as I know you know) reduandancy payments are not taxable. That would depend on the circumstances - the seniority of the individual versus the Directors making the decisions, whether the redundancy was a one-off or part of a wider scheme etc.

[bednobs]

it sounds to me that the OP wants to go back and do a compleely different job from the one that was made redundant call centre supervisor oppsed to helpdesk agent

[chattykathy]

There's a lot of talk about voluntary redundancy at my place of work and a Union rep told us that by law you can't return to the employer in any capacity within 4 weeks.