Sorry to hear the news. As others have already said it is worth contacting IET Connect who have partners with career support programmes to help you get back into employment. They also have  access to legal support.


Best wishes


Jack

Hi John

Sorry to hear this. Regard it as a stepping stone to change, and remain positive. I was offered redundancy when I was about your age. My friend said "If they offer you money take it and run!", which I did. I went contracting, or as people like sometimes like to call it:becoming a consultant. My first contract was with my old firm but in Paris, in the summer of 1998, wonderful. The World Cup was on and I commuted weekly from a local airport. After 3 months  it finished so having registered with agencies I got other work. But back to you; make sure you are set up for retirement. If offered a pension by your previous employer do not take the first pension provider offered, shop around. You will benefit not them! Talk to all your friends and take their advice (networking). I did this and purchased a small investment property, the income from this tided me over until I was elegible for my OAP.

You do not say in detail what your qualifications are or you field of expertise, and you were a bit negative about your lack of software experience. Remember you have to sell yourself to a possible employer. And think laterally, out of the box. Tell 'em what you can do, not what you can't do. I couldn't do software at all. And best of all - retirement is really fun!

Thank you to everyone for very helpful replies. I've been a bit depressed about this and could not summon the enthusiasm to reply up to now.

To answer a couple of Andy's questions - I am an IEng and, although there might well be Quality Management opportunities I think I would find that terribly tedious compared with engineering so would like to avoid if possible.

A frustration is that I cannot kick into action with many of the suggestions in this thread. We were supposed to get redundancy letters on the 14th, but the owners wife said she would leave it another week in case anything turns up. Since there are less than 20 employees it seems there is no legal process to follow.  We did try and see if the staff could take on the running of the business instead of closing it, but a £1M purchase price is now being quoted!

All we can do is wait and see!

Thank you Alasdair.  That's where we are at present, we've had the redundancy consultation letter and the individual consultations, now just waiting to see what will happen and when it will happen.

Why not try the job (employment) agencies. They are crying out for college lecturers etc. O.K. some jobs may be for a short time period only, but at least you are earning, and after that the agencies may find extra work for you. I have used the job agencies successfully in the past when work was scarce. Something is better than nothing, and the income is better than the dole. Although with benefits these days nobody starves, and there is housing benefit and council tax exemption.


C.