The form exists so somebody can help you find other work. In December, the question asking what work you did was taken out

THE QUESTION WESTMINSTER SHOULD BE ANSWERING. If the state collects redundancy notifications in order to route training and job brokering to the people losing work, why did it stop recording what work they did?

THE FORM. An employer proposing to dismiss twenty or more people at one site within ninety days must notify the Secretary of State on an HR1 form, through the Insolvency Service, under Part IV of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992. Thirty days' notice for twenty to ninety-nine, forty-five for a hundred or more. Failure without good cause is a criminal offence carrying an unlimited fine on summary conviction.

This is not a survey. It is compulsory, it is enforced, and the data goes to the Office for National Statistics weekly.

WHAT THE FORM IS FOR, IN THE DEPARTMENT'S OWN WORDS. At the head of it: the Redundancy Payments Service, acting on behalf of the Secretary of State, collects the information and distributes it to the government departments and agencies who offer job brokering services and training services, so that they can discharge their obligation to your employees. The form adds that the employee will be contacted directly by their local Jobcentre Plus.

The purpose is stated on the document. It exists so that somebody can help these people into other work.

WHAT IT USED TO ASK. Box six, mandatory, marked with an asterisk. Staff numbers and redundancies at this establishment. Three columns: occupational group, total employees, number of possible redundancies. Eight rows. Manual. Clerical. Professional. Managerial. Technical. Apprentices and trainees. Under 18. Other.

Crude categories, and older than they sound. But an answer to the question of what kind of work was going.

WHAT CHANGED. The Insolvency Service demonstrated a new digital form in August 2025 and published a page answering questions from that session on the nineteenth. One of them reads: is the occupational group breakdown still required. The answer given is no, this is not required in the new form.

From 1 December 2025 the digital version became the only accepted route. The paper form was withdrawn.

In the same revision the department added a new reason for redundancy: change in supply chain or loss of supply chain contract. So the list of causes is a maintained set, revised when the department decides something has become important enough to name. It found room to add one while removing the field describing who it happened to.

WHAT SURVIVES. The employer must still say how many. Still say where. Still tick a reason from a fixed list. Those reasons include, and have since the form was designed, introduction of new technology, plant or machinery.

So the state has kept the question about the cause and dropped the question about the person.

WHAT WE ASKED, AND WHAT WE DO NOT KNOW. We wrote to the Insolvency Service on 2 September and gave until 11 September. We asked for the full current list of reasons, whether any covers a job replaced by software, why the occupational breakdown was removed, and whether anyone still holds a record of which occupations are hit. Alistair Harris, its media and communications manager, acknowledged the same day and said the department would certainly meet the deadline. That deadline has not passed. We will print the answer in full.

Until then, four things we cannot tell you. Why it was removed. Whether anything replaced it. Whether Jobcentre Plus was consulted, or objected. And whether anyone in government noticed.

What we can tell you is that the number is still collected, published weekly, and broken down by industry and region. Britain knows how many and where. It has decided it does not need to know what they did.