Business reorganisation

This topic considers the employment-related legal and practical issues that may arise when an employer reorganises the structure of its business and how to manage the interaction between them.

Implementing a business reorganisation—employment issues

A number of employment law issues arise when a business wants to implement a reorganisation. The various issues are both legal and practical and how to manage the interaction between them can be challenging.

In practice, businesses will often take calculated risks on short-cutting the relevant legal processes, perhaps to save time or by a degree of reverse engineering to achieve a desired outcome.

The exercise should be approached from the start as one that may be subject to legal challenge. This means that until the point a final decision has been taken on the new structure, all documents created for the purposes of planning the re-structure should be marked draft, and at a point in the process where a proposal has been reached, they should be marked 'subject to consultation'.

Once the business has a preferred new structure, usually from a range of options that have been considered, the following employment law issues

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Right to work guidance updated on Digital Verification Service checks

The Home Office has issued an updated version of its ‘Employer’s guide to right to work checks’ document, with the changes primarily related to simplifying the information on digital checks for employers of British and Irish citizens who have a valid passport (or Irish passport card). The new version has removed various technical details which were previously intended for providers of these digital verification services, and revised the relevant terminology, so that ‘Digital Verification Service (DVS)’ now includes both the terms Identity Service Providers (IDSPs) and Identity Document Validation Technology (IDVT). This is stated to align the guidance with the terminology used in the UK digital identity and attributes framework and the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025. Guidance and requirements specifically for DVS are now set out in a separate, supplementary code for digital right to work checks. The relevant guidance for employers has been revised. Although it is not currently mandatory for employers to use a DVS certified against the ‘trust framework’ and the supplementary code, this position will change ‘in the near future’, and it will become mandatory to use a DVS listed on the register of certified DVS (maintained by the Office for Digital Identities and Attributes (OfDIA)). In other changes, the new version reiterates that an original expired BRP is not proof of a right to work, and instead an online check must be taken. It also confirms that short-term entry clearance vignettes are being phased out, and that increasingly persons recently issued entry clearance will only have their eVisa to rely on for these purposes, so will need to create a UKVI account as soon as possible and can do this from overseas. In relation to asylum seekers with a pending claim, the guidance now states that they can also volunteer whilst their claim is considered without being granted permission to work, but they can only carry out 'paid' work if they have been granted permission to work under the Immigration Rules, Part 11, paras 360 or 360C. Previously the reference in our quotation marks to ‘paid’ work stated ‘voluntary’ work

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