Hello, just found this forum after spending ages googling for an answer, and I think you guys just might be able to help.....I hope so anyway!

My husband works for a haulage firm who are contracted to provide the transport/delivery for a huge well-known brewery. He is a chargehand/shunter at the national distribution centre.

A couple of months ago they were told that they would have to prepare for redundancies, firstly from the shunting operation, and then from the core drivers side later on in the year. Management and union could not agree terms, so ACAS were brought in, resulting in an agreement being reached a fortnight ago. At this time the firm announced the terms and requested voluntary redundancies. My husband (who has been with the firm for 9 1/2 years and is aged 58) was satisfied with the terms and registered his interest. Last week the firm then wrote to him and asked him to confirm his formal request for voluntary redundancy within 3 days, which he did. On Friday he was told verbally (but not yet in writing) that his request has been accepted and he will be made voluntarily redundant. He was given to understand that the process would take around 30 days to complete (the firm are rearranging shifts for the remaining workers). I should state that the firm requested 2 redundancies, 7 people volunteered and the firm have hinted that they may well take all 7 now, since there would probably have been further redundancies later in the year anyway.

We are due to go on holiday on 14 May, and had hoped that he would be able to leave his employment just before our holiday. Now here comes the crunch.......he has now been told that the next union/management meeting to thrash out the final terms, dates, etc., is not until 13 May.......so he won't be able to leave or find out the details until after our return from holiday!

My question is this: Can my husband approach HR and give them a date when he would like to leave/take his redundancy? Or does he have to wait for them to tell him? Ideally, he would like to leave one week before our holiday.......can he stipulate this?

To be frank, we are fed up with all the uncertainty and waiting around for others to make decisions that affect OUR lives. My husband has registered with a couple of agencies, but obviously cannot do any other work or take things further until he leaves his present employment. He's worried that if he badgers his employers, they will simply tell him to leave if he's that desperate to go!

Thanks in anticipation of any help you are able to give.