Today half our department was called into meetings and told that certain people's jobs were at risk (4 jobs total with 2 redundancies), they'd been pooled and were going to be made redundant unless they applied for another position.

However, they told us that whilst we weren't currently at risk, if one of those people applied for one of our positions, we'd be dragged into a pool as well and they'd do a skills matrix.

Now the jobs the people facing redundancy do are completely different to our jobs. I was under the impression that they could only apply for jobs at risk, and apparently they've been given a list of jobs they can apply for. However, in the meeting we were told that they could apply for any job (within reason presumably)...which meant that we may enter the same situation.

So my question is, is it legal for people facing redundancy to apply for an existing position that's currently filled, and thus make the person currently in that position redundant?