I think I am being discriminated against: redundancy and your settlement agreement

Redundancy selection and protected characteristics

The Equality Act 2010 protects nine characteristics: age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, and sexual orientation (s.4). A redundancy process must apply its selection criteria and pool consistently and without regard to any of these; if a protected characteristic is a reason, even one reason among others, for who is selected or how the criteria are scored, that selection is discriminatory regardless of whether the underlying redundancy itself is genuine.

What discriminatory selection looks like in practice

Direct discrimination (s.13) is treating you worse because of a protected characteristic itself, such as scoring older employees down on an unstated assumption about adaptability. Indirect discrimination (s.19) is a criterion applied equally on its face, such as "willingness to relocate" or an attendance-based score that counts disability- or pregnancy-related absence, that puts people sharing a characteristic at a particular disadvantage compared with others, and cannot be shown to be a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim. A selection pool drawn unusually narrowly around people who share a characteristic, or scoring that cannot be evidenced, are both common warning signs worth raising during consultation and keeping a record of.

Why discrimination awards are uncapped

An ordinary unfair dismissal claim carries a statutory cap on the compensatory award, currently the lower of £123,543 or 52 weeks' pay. A discrimination claim under the Equality Act 2010 has no such cap on compensation (Part 9): a tribunal can award your full financial loss, an injury-to-feelings sum under the Vento bands, and in some cases aggravated or exemplary damages, with no minimum length of service required to bring the claim at all. Where a redundancy dismissal is both discriminatory and, for that same reason, automatically unfair, the discrimination claim is usually what removes the cap from the overall award.

The Vento bands for injury to feelings

Injury to feelings, the distress caused by the discrimination itself rather than any financial loss, is valued using the Vento bands: a lower band for one-off or less serious acts, a middle band for more serious cases that do not merit the top band, and an upper band for the most serious cases, such as a lengthy campaign of discriminatory treatment. The bands are uprated periodically by Presidential Guidance addendum, so the exact current figures, and how a tribunal typically places a case within a band, are set out in full in our Vento bands guide.

How a discrimination claim strengthens a settlement negotiation

An employer facing a claim with no compensation cap and no minimum service requirement is exposed to a materially larger and less predictable liability than an ordinary unfair dismissal claim alone, and that exposure is what moves a negotiation. A settlement agreement is not a concession that a discrimination claim is weak; it is frequently the outcome employers prefer precisely because the claim is strong, since it converts an open-ended tribunal risk into a fixed, confidential, agreed sum. Evidence of the discriminatory element, such as scoring records, comparators, or contemporaneous notes, is what turns a general grievance into leverage an employer's advisers can actually value.

Acas early conciliation and time limits

You must notify Acas for early conciliation before issuing most tribunal claims, including discrimination claims, and the standard time limit to do so is three months less one day from the discriminatory act (or, for a continuing course of conduct, from its end). Notifying Acas pauses that clock while conciliation is live. This is the current rule; the Employment Rights Act 2025 provides for changes to tribunal time limits once commenced, so always check the position that applies at the time you are reading this rather than assuming it is fixed. See our Acas early conciliation guide for how the process works and how it interacts with a settlement agreement.

What a settlement agreement should contain in this situation

Split every item into what you are owed regardless of any negotiation, and what is genuinely up for discussion. Never let an uncapped discrimination claim be folded into a headline figure without a separate, itemised sum for it.

When the offer is too low

An offer priced as if only an ordinary unfair dismissal claim were in play is likely too low where a genuine discrimination element exists, since that claim carries no cap on compensation and no minimum length of service. That combination is real leverage, and a reason to have any offer valued against the discrimination claim specifically, not just the redundancy, before you sign.

Frequently asked questions