Answers · UK 2025/26
What is TUPE and does it protect my job if my employer changes?
TUPE (Transfer of Undertakings, Protection of Employment) rules automatically transfer employees, on their existing terms and conditions, when a business (or part of it) is sold, outsourced, or changes contractor, protecting continuity of employment, pay and most terms, though redundancies for genuine economic, technical or organisational reasons can still happen.
Full answer
TUPE, which stands for the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations, is UK employment law designed to protect employees when the business, or a distinct part of it, that they work for changes ownership -- whether through a full business sale, an outsourcing arrangement being awarded to a new contractor, or an existing outsourced service contract switching from one provider to another. Where TUPE applies, affected employees automatically transfer to the new employer on exactly the same terms and conditions of employment they had before, including their existing pay, holiday entitlement, length of service (which counts continuously for calculating things like redundancy entitlement and unfair dismissal qualifying periods, as if they had always worked for the new employer), and most other contractual rights, without needing to sign a new contract or reapply for their own job. Crucially, TUPE also makes it automatically unfair to dismiss an employee specifically because of the transfer itself, and it restricts the new employer's ability to make changes to transferred employees' terms and conditions purely because of the transfer, unless there is an economic, technical or organisational reason involving changes in the workforce (commonly abbreviated an 'ETO reason') that genuinely justifies the change, such as a legitimate need to restructure the wider business for operational reasons unrelated simply to the transfer having happened. This does not mean job losses can never happen around a TUPE transfer -- redundancies can still occur if there is a genuine ETO reason, such as the new employer having a genuine overlap or reduced need for certain roles across the combined business -- but the process for making transferred employees redundant must still follow fair, proper redundancy consultation and selection procedures, exactly as would be required for any other redundancy situation, and cannot simply be used as a pretext to avoid the protections TUPE is designed to provide.
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This answer is informational only and does not constitute financial, tax or legal advice. Figures are for the 2025/26 UK tax year. See our methodology and sources.