Risk of Redundancy and Ring-Fenced Post

A question about : Risk of Redundancy and Ring-Fenced Post

I'd be really grateful for advice. I'm getting married next year and have just found out my boyfriend has been put at risk of redundancy. Three sections are going to be merged and the three managers of those areas (including my boyfriend) have been ring-fenced to apply for the new position. The other two managers have decided to leave, but my boyfriend hasn't been automatically appointed into the new job, so still has to be interviewed for it. Even though he meets the essential criteria for the job and seems to be well suited for it, is there still a possibility that he won't be appointed? I'm worried that even though he's ring-fenced, they won't appoint him, making him redundant so they can then advertise the job externally. This is really worrying me.

Thanks for any advice

Best answers:

• It all depends on who's best for the job...I've worked mainly in the public sector so each time posts were filled as per competency based interviewing. You may have been the best person for the job but, IN THEORY, if you scored bad you wouldn't get the job (though that was subject to creative tinkering).
  Best to check what their redundancy policy is - a lot of firms will seek to offer preference to those staff deemed to be at risk, if they meet the needs of the post.
  Given 2/3 are leaving they may well decide to go out to external recruitment for other interviews...but again, it's all subjective as to their own policy and whether they want a competitive interview/recruitment process.
• Thanks. We've both read the policy and its very open ended. Enabling his employer to keep its options open. There are other jobs that he could probably do with minimal training but their policy on Redeployment doesn't seem to guarantee that he'll definitely have the opportunity to try out for any other role either. I suppose I was hoping that, legally, if he could make a valid case for meeting the job criteria on the ring fenced post and demonstrate it, they'd have to appoint him. But, if he has no legal right to be directly appointed into a ring fenced post, as the only candidate with suitable qualifications and experience, I suppose they could use creative tinkering with the interview scoring to not appoint him. As the selection process looks very involved, rather than just competency based, it really looks like it will just be a case of whether 'they want' to keep him or not. I was hoping he'd be entitled to be appointed to the position and possibly helped or trained in the new job if his employers thinks he needs it. The worry continues!