Missing Employment Contract & Structual Changes.

[Nodnol]

Having requested a copy of my current employment contract, my employer has essentially said they cannot locate it. On their instruction, I requested a copy of my personal file in order to see if a copy of it was included, as I just expected this be an oversight at branch leve. Having received a copy of all my files and info held on me, it includes everything except my contract! I definitely signed a contract when I commenced employment 6 years ago, but was never issued a copy, only a staff handbook and a letter offering me employment with a job title of 'General assistant delivery department'.
The relevance is that my employer is now making structual changes which will affect what my duties are as my duties will now be, at least 50% of the time, on a different department to the one I was employed on. I understand that a handbook and an offer letter would form part of my contract, so would I be right in assuming that this would constitute a contractual change?
All help much appreciated.

[fiction-factory]

Even if you can find your contract I don't think it will contain anything that would prevent them changing the terms around duties and department at some stage in your working life there- but they will need to give appopraite notice and consultation

[DannytheRed]

It depends what your contract says! Sorry, but true. It might have a clause indicating that you are presently employed in department X, but can be moved to other departments. It will almost certainly have some sort of flexibility clause ('and such other duties as you may from time to time be called upon to perform') and even if it doesn't, a court might impute one (if you were employed as a typist in 1962, you could not refuse to work on a word processor in 2015).

[Buenchico]

Your employer should have provided you with a 'written statement of employment particulars' within two months of commencing work:
https://www.gov.uk/employment-contracts-and-conditions/written-statement-of-employment-particulars
However if the letter you received (offering you the job) and the staff handbook jointly include all of the relevant information then there was probably no need for your employer to issue a separate document.

Even so, it might be worth showing them my link and asking for that 'written statement'.

Being allocated to working with a different department of the company is unlikely to be regarded as a 'change of contract' unless either:
(a) that department is located a significant distance from the original one ; or
(b) the nature of the work is markedly different and outside the scope of what you might have been expected to do originally.

(NB: Since your job title was given as 'general assistant' within the delivery department you couldn't complain if, say, you were taken off driving for that department and reallocated to filing their invoices. So its unlikely that you'd have any right to complain if, say, you were allocated to filing invoices for the neighbouring 'goods inward' department).

[Nodnol]

The staff handbook has no mention of potential flexibility clauses etc, it just covers rules and day to day stuff. I've read cover to cover, nothing mentioned other than that individual staff should refer to their contracts for more bespoke information relating to them. Something I can't do and the company is not interested in helping!
With no contract to refer to, only my original letter, I feel slightly lost tbh. The handbook does however note that a copy of your contract should always be provided if requested.

[fiction-factory]

It's worth asking again then and pointing out they have an obligation to provide it. If they can't then you could raise a grievance although I'm not sure where it would take you. But I am 99% certain that even if it could be found there would be nothing in it that would prevent some changes to your role- in fact I'm surprise 6 years have passed without any changes