Voluntary Redundancy Revoked

My wife is a TA at a school. The school has to lose many hours next year so all TAs were asked to take an 18% reduction in hours or one or more would have to be made redundant. TAs were told that anyone could request Voluntary Redundancy, so my wife did. She received a letter from the local council saying "I am writing to confirm that your request has been approved by ??? School and the Local Authority, subject to it not being possible to identify any suitable alternative employment prior to the effective date of redundancy.".

A prior letter contained details of the estimates of entitlements as a result of redundancy. Since my wife is 55 this included a Redundancy Retirement Pension Estimate.

My wife has just received a letter from the head teacher that states "I have to inform you that the approval for funding for your redundancy payment by the Loal Authority has been withdrawn. As a consequence ??? School have decided that it is not within the best interests of the school to accept your offer of voluntary redundancy.".

So the obvious question is "Can they do this", i.e. agree the the VR then withdraw it?

Irrespective of that, if my wife still refuses to accept the reduction in hours and the school initiates the process of determining who should be made redundant on merit, how can the process be valid if it is known that at least one person cannot be made redundant if their "rating" is the lowest of all? Apart from that, my wife has to consider that her refusal to accept the reduction in hours will probably lead to one of her colleagues being made redundant!

I am afraid that any redundancy can be withdrawn right up to the last second of the notice period.

I don't understand your final point - there is nothing to indicate that at least one person can't be made redundant. Your wife can still be made compulsorily redundant - there was nothing in what you quoted that said that they were keeping her because she is "invaluable", but because they cannot afford the package due to funding being withdrawn