It would not normally be appropriate to consider external candidates for a vacancy during a redundancy exercise. There is nothing wrong with implementing a competitive interview process to choose between candidates (i.e. to match vacant roles with the potentially redundant employees) but to consider external candidates as part of this process may result in a finding of unfairness.

In a redundancy exercise, the employer must make reasonable efforts to look for alternative employment as part of consultation (and in a collective redundancy situation this is particularly so). The aim of this is to minimise the number of job losses by redeploying affected individuals where possible. To open up vacancies externally would arguably interfere with this objective. However, every case is different and will depend on the particular facts and circumstances of the case when assessing fairness.