promotion during redundancy

Although not personally affected my company are currently making promotions during a period of consultation for redundancy.

They announced massive redundancies (24% of the office) and a few weeks later the announced promotions (about 8% of the office)...

This only started to concern me as a director asked if demotion was an option instead of redundancy, and was told that she couldn't be demoted into a redundancy pool (the job title below her is at risk). However, people have been promoted into redundancy pools - surely its the same thing?

So... Legally... can you promote into redundancy pools? and/or can you demote into redundancy pools?

Thanks...

The law isn't that prescriptive and specific, it's all about fairness and 'reasonableness'.

If someone from a pool was made redundant and someone else who was promoted into that pool wasn't, the person who was made redundant may be able to appeal it on the grounds that it was not a genuine redundancy, ie would not have been necessary had extra people not been added to the pool.

Alternatively if someone less experienced and at a lower level is promoted into a pool and ends up staying, someone more experienced and skilled might have an argument based on selection criteria, assuming the usual criteria around performance, skills, experience etc are used.

But it's not as clear-cut as 'promoting people into a redundancy pool is illegal', it's more about 'person made redundant who might otherwise not have been might have a case'