Made redundant from Airsprung in Trowbridge? Here’s what you can claim and the deadline nobody’s mentioned

8 May 2026 • By Tom Street, Solicitor

If you’re one of the 71 people who lost their job at Airsprung last week, the next few weeks matter more than you might think. Some of what you’re owed won’t come from the company at all. It’ll come from the government. And one of the biggest potential claims has a tight three-month deadline that the administrators are unlikely to flag for you.

We’re a local firm, based in Frome, about seven miles from the Canal Road site. We’ve put this together because the rules around insolvency redundancies are different from a standard redundancy, and a lot of workers walk away with less than they’re entitled to.

Why this is different from a normal redundancy

When a solvent employer makes you redundant, they pay you directly. When the employer is in administration, the company usually doesn’t have the cash. The Redundancy Payments Service steps in and pays the statutory parts of what you’re owed out of the National Insurance Fund.

You don’t claim from PwC. You claim from the government. The administrators will normally hand you, or email you, an RP1 form with a reference number, and you complete it online. A second form, RP2, deals with notice pay and is sent to you a few weeks later when you’re eligible. Don’t put either off. The forms are straightforward and the payments are processed separately, so you may receive several different letters and payments over the following weeks.

What the Insolvency Service will pay

The RPS can pay four main things, each subject to its own cap. All of them use the £751 weekly pay limit that came in on 6 April 2026.

Statutory redundancy pay. If you’ve got two or more years of continuous service, you’re entitled to a redundancy payment. The formula is age-based: half a week’s pay for each full year worked under 22, one week’s pay for each year between 22 and 40, and one and a half weeks’ pay for each year from 41 onwards. Service is capped at 20 years. The maximum payment is £22,530. Statutory redundancy pay is tax-free.

Notice pay. The statutory minimum is one week’s notice for each full year of service, up to a maximum of 12 weeks. If you weren’t given notice, the RPS pays this through form RP2. Notice pay is taxable.

Holiday pay. Up to six weeks of accrued but untaken holiday from the past 12 months.

Arrears of pay. Up to eight weeks of unpaid wages, including unpaid bonuses and commission.

If you’re owed more than the RPS caps, you can register as a creditor in the insolvency for the balance. You may not get all of it back, but it’s worth doing.

The claim most Airsprung workers don’t know they have

This is the bit that often gets missed. When an employer proposes to dismiss 20 or more people at one establishment within a 90-day period, section 188 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 kicks in. The employer has to consult collectively with elected employee representatives or a recognised trade union, in good time, before any dismissal takes effect.

For 20 to 99 redundancies, the minimum consultation period is 30 days before the first dismissal. Airsprung’s 71 redundancies sit squarely in that bracket.

If the proper consultation didn’t happen, an employment tribunal can make a protective award of up to 90 days’ actual gross pay per employee. That’s uncapped, so it’s based on what you actually earned, not the £751 weekly limit. For someone earning, say, £600 a week, that’s potentially £7,800 on top of redundancy pay.

Going into administration doesn’t excuse this. Case law is clear that insolvency on its own isn’t a “special circumstances” defence under section 188(7). The duty to consult survives the appointment of administrators, although the administrators themselves don’t normally face personal criminal liability for missing the deadline.

The practical reality: if you were told on 1 May that you were redundant the same day, with no prior 30-day consultation period, no elected representatives, and no proper information pack about the proposed redundancies, there’s a real prospect of a protective award claim.

The catch: you need to bring the claim within three months less one day from the date of dismissal, and you have to go through Acas Early Conciliation first. So if your last day was 1 May 2026, you’ve got until the end of July to start that process. Miss it and the claim is gone.

One thing to flag. The RPS will pay protective awards, but only as if they were arrears of pay, capped at eight weeks at £751 a week. Anything beyond that you claim from the insolvent estate as a creditor. So the tribunal award stands, but you may not see all of it. Even with that caveat, it’s usually well worth pursuing.

If you’re one of the 131 still in work

The administrators have said they’re trading on while they look for a buyer. That’s good news in the short term. But a few things to keep an eye on.

If a buyer emerges and takes the business as a going concern, TUPE (the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 2006) is likely to apply. Your employment, your length of service, and most of your terms transfer across automatically. A new owner can’t lawfully cut your pay or change your contract just because of the transfer.

If the rescue plan involves variations to terms, redundancies, or a relocation, take advice before signing anything. Don’t accept a “new contract” on the assumption that you have to. You probably don’t.

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