I am picking up a historical situation, where we've employed a Language Assistant in our independent school. This person has always been employed on fixed term contracts from October to May (approx) over the last few years. They originally started a (fixed term) contract at the school in 2013 which ran from Oct to May, but they have then done this every year up to the academic year 2019/20. They are written to with a new offer for the specific academic year, with dates pertaining to that year, each time. They have not been issued a new contract in this time. On the HR database their start date is recorded as 2013 as they were never made officially a leaver.

We have not had a requirement this academic year (all very unclear due to lockdown/schools opening/closing etc) and are unlikely to do so for the rest of this year. My question is (and I think I have pretty much answered it myself but need a sense check!), do we need to treat this as a redundancy and take into account service from 2013 even though it has been a series of fixed term contracts. It is slightly unusual in that usually if we were doing a fixed term contract for an academic year it would run from 1 Sept to 31 Aug and would be a full year. This one has always cut out in May. This person has not physically worked for the school since the first lockdown in March 2020, when they were furloughed until end May 2020. No formal communication with them since and I am now trying to piece this together. Any advice gratefully received.