Mobility Clauses In A Redundancy Situation

Where an employer, to avoid making an employee redundant, changes an employee's place of work, it will be acting in breach of contract unless the employment contract contains a 'mobility clause'. In the recent case of Home Office v Evans & anor (2007), the Home Office sought to invoke a mobility clause to relocate employees. The Court of Appeal had to determine whether the Home Office's approach was lawful.

The claimants were immigration officers based at the Waterloo International Terminal ("WIT"). They were "mobile-grade" employees, subject to a mobility provision in the staff handbook which stated that they could be transferred to any civil service post in the UK or abroad. The Home Office decided to close the immigration controls at Waterloo and informed all staff at WIT that there was no longer a requirement for immigration officers to be based there.