Redundancy support

The Government website is a good place to start.

• Government website: Redundancy – Your rights.

The MoneyHelper website also has a range of information on your rights.

• MoneyHelper website: Your legal rights when facing redundancy.

The Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS) is an independent public body that provides free and impartial advice to employers, employees and their representatives on employment rights, best practice and policies and resolving workplace conflict. When things go wrong they can help resolve disputes between employers and employees. Their website has lots of useful information to help you.

• ACAS website: Your rights during redundancy.

The Citizens Advice website also has information to help you understand your rights, especially if you feel your redundancy may not be fair or if you have been dismissed from your job.

• Citizens Advice website: Leaving a job.

The Government website has useful resources to help you:

• claim benefits
• cope with redundancy
• get another job and improve your skills

They also have a list of jobsearch websites you could sign up to.

• Government website: Redundancy – Help finding work and claiming benefits.

The Government Help for Households site has useful information to see what cost of living support you could be eligible for:

• Help with energy bills
• Help with childcare costs
• Help finding work
• Income support
• Household costs
• Transport costs

MoneyHelper has a tool to help you get a tailored action plan and information for your circumstances. In less than one minute you can get tailored guidance for your situation and specific to where you live in the UK. 

If you’ve not yet been made redundant, choose ‘Employed’ and then when asked if you are at risk of redundancy choose ‘Yes’.

The MoneyHelper also has a useful checklist, taking you through some key steps you can take if you are out of work including if you are renting, have a mortgage, entitled to benefits or have debts outstanding. 

• MoneyHelper website: Out of work checklist.

MoneyHelper has some information about what you can do with your pension plan if you are made redundant. They provide free support to help you with any pensions-related question you have via a free helpline, webchat or online enquiry form.

• MoneyHelper website: Redundancy and your pension.
• MoneyHelper website: Contact information.

The plan will continue and your pension fund will remain invested and will continue to benefit from any investment growth. We will continue to deduct any charges that are relevant to your plan.

Depending on the type of pension plan you have, either we or your employer will contact you with the options you have.

You will be able to transfer the value of your pension plan to another provider. 

You may be able to:

• continue to make payments to your pension plan if you want to, or become self-employed or not working
• ask your new employer to make payments to your pension plan with us

You can check with your employer or on your scheme website to find out more about what is applicable to your plan.

New employer?

If you start working for a new employer, they will be required to automatically enrol you into, or ask you to join, their workplace pension scheme. 

Help us to keep in touch, by logging in to legalandgeneral.com/mya and updating your personal details. While you're there please make sure the email address we hold for you is correct. If you've not already registered for Manage Your Account it's simple and takes minutes. You'll need your pension account number. Once registered you'll be able to check how your savings are doing on a regular basis.

Whatever you decide to do with your pension plan, you’ll be able to take your money in a variety of ways at your selected retirement age or any time after age 55. The longer you leave your plan invested however, the more opportunity there is to benefit from any investment growth, although this can’t be guaranteed as the value of your plan can go down as well as up.

We’re here to help. If you have any questions about your pension plan, please contact us on 0345 070 8686. Lines are open from 8.30am to 7pm, Monday to Friday and 9am to 12 noon on Saturdays. Call charges will vary. We may record and monitor calls. Please be aware our helpline staff cannot provide financial advice. Alternatively, you can speak to a financial adviser, who may charge for their services.

Mind is a mental health charity that provides a free helpline and lots of useful resources to help. Visit Mind's Get help now page where they provide quick links to emergency advice and other helplines, crisis coping tools and how to ask your doctor for help.  They also have resources if you are seeking help for someone else.

A very good source of information and support is the NHS Every Mind Matters website. There are practical guides to managing mental health issues as well as signposts to organisations and helplines that could make a huge difference to your emotional wellbeing. 

The NHS mood self-assessment tool is a quick tool to help you assess how you’re feeling and get support. 

The NHS audio guides give practical tips to boost your mood (maximum 10 mins long) and lots of useful resources for a range of mental health topics such as stress, anxiety, feeling lonely, grief, anger, low self –esteem and depression. 

You might also like to try the NHS Mind Plan Quiz to get tips and advice tailored to support your needs. Just answer five questions to get your personalised mind plan from Public Health England to help you get through. 

If you're in need of support your employer may have a wellbeing or mental health policy that can help you or they may be providing a package of support during the redundancy process. Look out for Employee Assistance programmes where you can get free advice and help or you may have mental health first aiders that can support you.