Office closing, moving place of work, redundancy?

Our office is closing and I will be working from home from next month. Here is the formal letter stating the change in the situation, effectively a redundancy and immediate job offer of my current job:

I write further to our meeting on Wednesday 1st July. As discussed at that meeting,
the Company intends to close the office at XXXX by the end of July
and at this time we do not intend to open another London office.

Although technically the closure of the office creates a redundancy situation for
you, we do not wish to lose any staff from XXXXXXXXXXXX. To this end, in our
meeting I proposed that you will continue with the same job, on the basis that you
work from home, but otherwise on the same terms and conditions.

We will provide all necessary equipment for you to be home based and the usual Skype meetings
could be held from your home. The monthly meeting will either be held in London
or we may ask you to travel to Leeds for the day, but we would, of course, be
paying your travelling expenses. We believe this proposal amounts to suitable
alternative employment and will maintain your continuity of employment.

Accordingly, please accept this letter as formal confirmation of redundancy and our
offer of suitable alternative employment as outlined above. This employment would
commence immediately following the closure of the XXXXXXX office.

I hope you will accept the alternative employment we offer, and assuming you do, I
would be grateful if you could sign and date a copy of this letter and return it to
me. In due course I will formally confirm the variation of your contract of
employment to take into account the change of place of work.

If you wish to appeal against the decision that your role is redundant please lodge
your appeal with me in writing on or before Tuesday 14th July.

I'm confused as to why I'm being made redundant and re-employed due to a change in my place of work and a 'variation of my contract'. Do they need to do this, and if so will I lose my service record (I've been with the company for over 8 years) in the event that I'm 'really' made redundant?

Hi Simon

If you accept this offer, you would not lose your continuity of employment. The variation of contract that is being mentioned here is in relation to your place of work (which is currently the London office and will be changed to your home).

This is a redundancy situation as your employer is ceasing operations at your contracted place of work. However, if they are able to offer you a "suitable alternative" to redundancy you lose your right to redundancy pay if you do not accept it. The question is then, is this a "suitable alternative" that they are offering you. I doubt that it is as there is such fundamental change to your contract - it is not as if they are moving you from one office to another, they are forcing you to face the disruption of working from home. What if you don't have a suitable work space? What if you have a house full of toddlers?

If you are happy to continue working on this basis then I suggest you accept the change. If you really want to be made redundancy instead, I suggest you appeal and put to them that this is not an offer of a "suitable alternative" it is an offer an alternative that is unsuitalbe and, therefore, not acceptable to you. If it all gets nasty and they refuse to pay you any redundancy, you would have to bring a claim and ultimately an employment tribunal would decide whether or not this was a suitable alternative.

I hope that helps

Pete