If an employee has a fixed term contract and the organisation finds itself in the position of folding before the contract date, is the employee treated as being at risk of redundancy and/or are they entitled to be paid for whatever remains of their contract?

We have fixed term contracts of employment ending at the end of June. We have not yet been offered new contracts although these are anticipated. However, we had been told that if we do not intend to continue after the end of our contracts, we need to provide a letter of resignation. Please could you advise.

Can we make a post redundant (and make the appropriate redundancy payment) and then re-employ the post holder under a new contact of employment in the near future?

I am a charity trustee. We employ one person in connection with a post that was funded by a three-year grant that ended on 31 December 2007. We have continued to employ this person since then on an ad hoc basis, and on a reduced income, to work on small projects. We have told the employee that his rights to the statutory redundancy payment (as at 31 December 2007) are not affected by his willingness to continue working for the charity.

We are hoping to secure future income that may enable us to employ this person going forwards. However, this future income is uncertain. One option the trustees are considering is to make this person’s post redundant, on the basis that the work associated with the post ended on 31 December 2007, even though he has continued to work with us since then. His work in 2008 is in connection with specific activities that will end soon. I would like to know if it would be legitimate to make him redundant now, and maybe re-employ him in the coming months if we then have arrangements in place that will secure a future income stream. We are not expecting any objection from the employee. Our primary concern is with regard to the tax rules on redundancy payments.

I hope this is not a duplicate but having gone through many of the questions can't find one that quite covers mine: I have been employed by the same employer on two different 1 year fixed term contracts - Jan 2005 extended to Apr 2006 then funding ran out and was made redundant.

I claimed jobseekers allowance and was re-employed by them in Oct 2006 on another year's contract and still working for them but have been issued with notice that unless more funding is forthcoming, I will be redundant again at the end of this month.

This means that I have been employed by them for 34 of the last 40 months and, having read the BERR guidance, I can't decide whether or not that qualifies as continuous employment or not - can you help please?

We have a pregnant employee who is insisting that she will only take the minimum of 2 weeks maternity leave and then come back to work. However, (recently) her father died and she's not only suffered the emotional effects of this but she's been into hospital a couple of times with some pregnancy complications. My concern is that she'll come back to work after two weeks but may not actually be fit enough both emotionally and physically.

Is it appropriate for me to ask her for some kind of note from her doctor that says she's fit enough to come back to work?

Apart from my concerns about her health, I do have to be honest and say from a small charity's perspective, we couldn't afford for her to come back after two weeks and then be off sick (she is employed on a fixed term contract until 31 March 08 that we won't be renewing (but completely because of funding reasons not pregnancy or maternity reasons). Is there anything we can do to mitigate against this?

Many thanks - Caron