FOI release

FOI 142: HR1 forms received on or after 23 September 2020 to 27 November 2020

Updated 15 February 2021

Our ref: FOI20/21-142

Date: 29 December 2020

Dear ,

Re: Freedom of Information Act 2000

Thank you for your email of 27 November 2020 in which you requested the following from the Insolvency Service:

“I am writing to ask how many HR1 Advance Notice of Redundancy forms were received on or after 23 September 2020 until November 27 2020?”

Your request has been dealt with under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA).

I can confirm the agency holds the information that you have requested however, this is exempt information under section 43 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

Section 43(2) of the Act provides that information is exempt if its disclosure under this Act would, or would be likely to, prejudice the commercial interests of any person (including the public authority holding it).

In order to apply this exemption our FOI team have undertaken a public interest test and are satisfied that it is not appropriate to disclose this information. Doing so is likely to prejudice a trading company because provision of such information for a live company may impede their commercial interest. This could lead to reputational damage to the company, distress to any affected employees or provide an unfair advantage to any competitors of that business

We can, however, disclose the requested information on HR1 forms for the full months of September, October and November. These figures are provided in the table below.

Please note that employers are only required to file a Form HR1 where they are “proposing” to dismiss 20 or more employees at a single “establishment”.

“Propose” and “establishment” have distinct meanings in this context.

The aggregate number could include proposed dismissals due to insolvency, restructuring of a solvent/continuing business, changes to terms and conditions, proposed relocation of employees etc.

It should also be noted that a proposal to make a given number of dismissals does not necessarily result in all or any of the proposed dismissals occurring. Please note that the figures below may differ from those previously provided. Occasionally some HR1 form contain errors and are rejected (employer has resubmitted another form, or the form contained less than 20 proposed redundancies and so there was no requirement to notify). As a result, a small number of HR1s each month are reclassified as ‘inactive’ and are no longer included in figures.

	HR1 forms received
September	1,723
October	844
November	303

If you are not satisfied with the response we have provided you and would like us to reconsider our decision by way of an internal review (IR), please contact our Information Rights Team at foi@insolvency.gov.uk or by post at:

Information Rights Team

The Insolvency Service

3rd Floor

Cannon House

18 Priory Queensway

Birmingham

B4 6FD

United Kingdom

You also have the right to contact the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) if you wish for them to investigate any complaint you may have regarding our handling of your request. However, please note that the ICO is likely to expect an IR to have been completed in the first instance.

Kind regards

Redundancy Payments Service

The Insolvency Service

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, Official receivers and the Adjudicator are Data Controllers in respect of personal data processed by the Insolvency Service. For the details about how personal data is processed by the agency, please see the full Insolvency Service Personal Information Charter here: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/insolvency-service/about/personal-information-charter