Legal Advice Needed Urgently - possibly being screwed over by HR!

Hi all.

I’m hoping someone with a bit of employment law knowledge can help me out here as I find myself in a pickle.

There is currently a restructure going on at work. The restructure is basically splitting my directorate into two branches – one side is where all the project work will be done, new projects and processes are thought up and designed by this group of people. The other side is the Operations side where the day to day business as usual stuff happens – admin, customer service, registering people etc.

The restructure has got rid of some roles and created some new ones. There were no compulsory redundancies - anyone whose role was got rid of was offered a suitable alternative position.

I was not deemed to be one of those people affected as my role ‘supposedly’ still exists. My role is Registration Project Officer and I report to the Registration Project Manager. I also manage Continuing Professional Development (CPD), which is mandatory training for our registrants. My role profile (on which I was recruited) is based very heavily on project work. It doesnt mention CPD at all. I was led to believe when I was recruited that I would be overseeing CPD whilst undertaking a significant amount of project work in line with my job spec. For various reasons this hasn’t happened. This is mainly due to to the fact that the registration officer who I manage (who does most of the CPD work) has changed personnel three times in the 10 months I have been here. Consequently I have had to do a lot more hand holding and supervising that was envisaged, which has left me very little time for project work.

As part of the restructure, my Project/CPD team ceases to exist – my 2 line managers’ roles (Registration Project Managers – one is maternity cover for the other person) cease to exisit and they have both been allocated a slightly different project manager roles. My team has been combined with the team who collects the registration fees and we have been stripped of all project work and pushed completely into business as usual and customer service. My job title has changed from Projects Officer to Operations Coordinator (CPD specialist). I have been told there will be no significant project work in my new role, except implementing stuff thought up and scoped in the Project branch of the organisation.

I have essentially lost everything that was good and varied about my job and been left doing admin. My revised role profile is entirely unrelated to the one I was recruited on – to anyone who looks at them they will look like 2 different jobs.

The consultation period has now ended (except for my new team who have requested an extension). I have had several meetings to discuss my proposed new role, culminating in HR today telling me to like it or lump it and telling me if I wanted to take things further to get legal advice.

The annoying thing is, in the project branch there is a new role which would suit me perfectly – much more than what I’m being shoved in to. But I have basically been told that the role profile on which I was recruited never existed, I never did that job and that this new revised job is effectively what I have been doing all along. I requested that I be offered that position instead of the one I have been given. They said no. They said I can apply for it, but it is going out for external recruitment and I don’t think I’ll get it.

I’m not sure where I stand. It seems that everyone else whose roles have changed significantly have been told their old job no longer exists and then they’ve been offered the new one. For some reason this hasn’t happened for me. I’m pretty sure this is because I’m the only one who knows CPD and they can’t afford for me not to do that job but surely this isn’t fair and is possibly not legal.

Sorry for the ramblings. I’m so pissed off and upset at the way I’ve been treated. Any help or advice anyone can give would be rewarded with eternal gratitude and/or beer.