Does TUPE apply if I sell my company's shares?

No. On a share sale the employing company is unchanged, so there is no transfer of an undertaking and no consultation duty under the regulations. Your electricians keep the same employer, the same terms and the same service, and in many cases learn about the change only when you tell them.

How long before the transfer do I have to tell staff?

The regulations require it long enough beforehand to allow meaningful consultation rather than setting a fixed period, and employee liability information must reach the buyer at least 28 days before. In practice the election of representatives is what sets the timetable, so several weeks is realistic.

Can the buyer change terms and conditions after the transfer?

Not because of the transfer itself, which is the point of the regulations. Changes for a reason unconnected with it, or agreed variations that are genuinely to the employee's benefit, are treated differently, and harmonising terms with an existing workforce is a common area of dispute. Buyers who intend to change anything should take their own advice before completion rather than after.

What happens to my apprentices?

Apprentices assigned to the transferring business transfer with everybody else, along with their training agreements. Where the apprenticeship is funded or delivered through a provider, the arrangement needs checking in advance, because the paperwork does not always follow the people automatically.

TUPE When an Electrical Contracting Company Changes Hands

What AppliesIt applies to a transfer of the business, not to a sale of shares

Sell the shares and nothing changes from an employment point of view. The company that employed your electricians on Friday employs them on Monday, on identical terms, and the transfer regulations are not engaged at all. That is one of several reasons most owner-managed electrical businesses are sold as share transactions, and it is the first question to settle before anybody starts drafting a consultation timetable.

Sell the trade and assets and they apply in full. Everybody assigned to the business moves across to the buyer automatically, keeping their terms and their continuous service, and the liabilities attached to their employment move with them. Dismissals connected with the transfer are automatically unfair unless there is an economic, technical or organisational reason entailing changes in the workforce, and changing terms because of the transfer is similarly restricted.

There is a third situation that catches electrical contractors more often than the other two, and it is worth knowing about even when no sale is happening. Where a client moves a maintenance or testing contract from you to another contractor, that can be a service provision change, and the employees assigned to that contract may transfer to the incoming firm. Owners who have only met TUPE in that context sometimes assume it applies to every sale. It does not.

Sell the shares and nothing changes from an employment point of view; sell the trade and assets and the transfer regulations apply in full.

The ObligationsWhat has to happen, and when

Where TUPE applies, both sides have duties. The seller must inform, and where measures are envisaged consult, appropriate representatives of the affected employees, long enough before the transfer for the consultation to be meaningful. Where there is no recognised union and no existing body, representatives have to be elected, which itself takes time and is the step most often left too late.

Employee liability information has to reach the buyer in writing no later than 28 days before the transfer. That means the particulars of employment for each person, their age, any disciplinary and grievance record or claim from the previous two years, and any collective agreements in place. Assembling it is straightforward where records are in order and painful where the long-serving engineer never had a written contract.

A business with fewer than ten employees may deal with its people directly instead of through elected representatives, provided none are already in place. That is a genuine simplification for a small firm and it is not an exemption from the duty. The obligation to inform still applies, and the penalty for failing to consult is compensation of up to thirteen weeks' pay per affected employee.

The TimingThe timing mistakes that cost a seller their team

The first mistake is telling people too late, so the consultation period is compressed into a fortnight and the team correctly concludes that the decision was made months ago and kept from them. The second is telling them too early, before the buyer is committed, so a deal that may not happen unsettles a workforce for a quarter. The window between those two errors is narrower than it looks and it is worth planning rather than improvising.

The third is talking about the transaction instead of about them. Electricians hear an ownership change as a set of practical questions: my patch, my van, my mate on the team, my overtime, my pension, whether the new owner uses a different certification system. Answering those questions specifically, in person, does more for retention than any assurance about the strategic fit of the two businesses.

There is a technical point worth folding into the same conversation this year. Amendment 4 to BS 7671 was published on 15 April 2026 and the previous version is withdrawn on 15 October 2026, so every contractor is carrying a training and re-assessment task across that transition. A buyer taking on your team is taking on that task as well, and a seller who can show the training already programmed is handing over a team that is current rather than a cost that is pending.

Plan the People Timetable

Whether any of this applies to you depends on how the deal is structured, and that follows from knowing what the business is worth. Both are worth understanding early.

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