Asked to go Self Employed or Redundancy

My workmate and myself have both been working for a landscaping co for over a year we look after sites such as retail and others commercial etc, in the winter we do reduced hours on sites because of the season, and at this time we carry out a service gritting on sites at night.
Because of the very mild winter so far ie (last year we did this service for a very long spell) the company is losing money wages etc.
We work also from a lock up on an industrial type estate.
At the beginning of January my friend recieved a letter of intended redundancy from the companies outsourced HR dept there was no date on it and it was not on letter headed paper, I myself did not recieve the letter, we presumed it was because I drive HGV for the company at times. My mate recieved a phone call the day after telling him to ignore the letter, a week later we were called to a meeting at the office, at this meeting a proposal of self employment was put before us, after looking at it and trying to make some projections it looks to me that we will be well down on income if we go this route, also this involves invoicing the company every month from our business account and they will deduct a figure for purchasing there van and tools that we use at the moment. We have not had anything in writing regarding redundancy as yet, do we need to ask for a written notice of redundancy and reason etc. It doesnt look like a very good proposal to me as we will be working up to 60 hours a week with travel time and we will have to buy all our own fuels + NI stamp + holiday cover+ repairs maintenance etc. My mate had a meeting today and discovered that they have already sub contracted the gritting to someone else!!!!! Any advise would be helpfull we are currently on around £14500P/A both been employed over a year. Many Thanks in advance you are appreciated.

I am not sure what assistance I can give at this stage. It would appear that all they have done is make a proposal to you. They haven't said that you will be made redundant if you don't accept, and even if they do, there is nothing in what you have said so far that suggests that there is unfairness in this. You know the company is losing money, and that redundancy is a real prospect. If you do not want to accept the offer of self-employment, and there is no reason why you should, then you should refuse. At that stage it is up to the employer to determine whether they will make you redundant or not. I can see no obvious reason for asking them for a letter making you redundant - why would you want to ask for redundancy before they have decided to make you redundant?

Hi Sarel

many thanks for your reply, the company has asked us verbally to go self employed and also if we don,t we will be made redundant on 31st March.
Have discovered that this business is for sale and in it,s portfolio it states that it is an excellent business taking over 1.2 million and with a profit annually of 170,000, they have already made 5 redundancies because they wont go self employed. we have asked if there is a deadline for replying to the self employed proposal and at this stage there is not, but I presume there will be a deadline soon

Best Regards Reality

p.s. forgot to say at the moment they have asked us if we will take holidays that we have accrued before they were booked to take

The employer can ask you to take holidays - that is lawful.

Unless an actual sale occurs then nothing changes - the amount of money they may make does not stop them making staff redundant. If the jobs are selected then whether this is fair or not depends on the process - but basically it isn't hard to get it right. But you haven't really explained much about the jobs - are you the only people who do this particular job?

Hi Sarel

we are the only who people who do this job in our region
regards Reality

In that case I am afraid that you are, to use the vernacular, screwed unless a sale occurs. If that happens there is a possibility of arguing that redundancy is being enforced to avoud TUPE obligations. But otherwise I can see no way that they cannot carry out the redundancies.