By Brightmine Editorial Team
What’s already happened
Passage of the Employment Rights Act 2025 – changes implemented
The Employment Rights Bill, described as “the greatest shift in employment legislation in decades”, received Royal Assent on 18 December 2025 and passed into law as the Employment Rights Act 2025. In accordance with the Government’s timeline, the following measures have now been implemented:
- extended eligibility for statutory sick pay;
- making paternity leave and ordinary parental leave day-one rights;
- simplifications of the trade union recognition process;
- doubling of the protective award from 90 to 180 days’ pay;
- establishment of the Fair Work Agency;
- addition of sexual harassment to whistleblowing legislation;
- introduction of electronic and workplace balloting in connection with industrial action; and
- extension of employment tribunal time limits.
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What’s happening
This is our summary of the main employment law news and of legislative changes that will be happening, with analysis of what they mean for you as an HR professional.
30 October 2026
Stronger harassment law
Employers are under a specific duty to take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment of their workers in the course of their employment. The Employment Rights Act 2025 will strengthen this duty by requiring employers to take “all reasonable steps” to prevent sexual harassment. It will also introduce employer liability for harassment by third parties, such as clients and customers. The new third-party harassment provision extends to all three forms of harassment prohibited by the Equality Act 2010 (including harassment related to a protected characteristic, as well as sexual harassment).
These changes are due to come into force on 30 October 2026.
What can HR do now?
- Audit current practices: Assess current approach to assessing, managing and preventing the risk of harassment, including from third parties.
- Assess and manage risk: Carry out, review or update harassment risk assessments. Make sure risk assessments are regularly reviewed and used to inform practical action.
- Assign ownership and accountability: Identify who is responsible for overseeing compliance, monitoring risks and ensuring that preventative measures are implemented and reviewed. Consider involving relevant stakeholders across the organisation, including senior leaders, managers and operational teams.
- Strengthen training and awareness: Review whether training remains effective, is delivered regularly and is appropriately tailored.
- Monitor workplace culture and reporting mechanisms: Review employee feedback, surveys, complaints and exit interview data to identify emerging risks. Ensure workers know how to raise concerns and that reports are investigated appropriately, with lessons learned feeding back into prevention efforts.
- Stay informed: Look out for updated guidance from the Equality and Human Rights Commission, further Government consultation and regulations intended to provide greater clarity on what constitutes reasonable steps (although these regulations are not expected until 2027, which is after the changes have come into force).
Reform of trade union laws – phase three
The Employment Rights Act 2025 reforms trade union legislation. Phase three of the reforms comes into force on 30 October 2026. This will:
- introduce a right of union access to the workplace (both physical and virtual), to meet, support, represent, recruit or organise workers, and to facilitate collective bargaining;
- require employers to provide workers with a written statement that they have the right to join a trade union;
- require employers to provide trade union representatives with reasonable accommodation and facilities;
- introduce a right to time off for trade union equality representatives;
- prohibit any detriment imposed for the purpose of penalising, preventing, or deterring a worker from taking industrial action; and
- strengthen protections against unfair practices during the statutory recognition process.
On 6 July 2026, the Government published the draft Regulations and Code of practice on the right of trade unions to access workplaces. These confirm the process to follow when a union requests access, and the role of the Central Arbitration Committee if an agreement is not reached.
What can HR do now?
- Review current practices around employee relations: In non-unionised organisations, review whether effective arrangements are currently in place for consulting and engaging with staff (eg staff councils). Consider introducing or improving processes to enhance employee relations and engagement.
- Cultivate good relations with staff and unions: In unionised organisations, adopt best practice and cultivate constructive relationships with both unions and staff. Ensure current dispute resolution procedures are effective.
- Prepare for access requests: Review the draft Code of Practice: Right of trade unions to access workplaces, and prepare for how the organisation would respond to a request for access from a union. Consider what access would be reasonable to provide, in terms of locations and timings, and any specific issues, such as privacy or health and safety.
- Check applicability to your organisation: Employers with fewer than 21 employees will not be required to provide unions with workplace access. The number of employees includes those at associated employers in a group, rather than being calculated at workplace level.
- Separately, the draft Code of practice: Access and Unfair Practices During the Recognition and Derecognition Process deals with access in the specific context of recognition/derecognition processes, so review this code if a recognition request is anticipated.
- Review the draft Acas code of practice on time off for trade union duties and activities and consider if current arrangements for providing accommodation and facilities for union representatives and time off for equality representatives meet the new requirements.
- Train managers: Provide staff with training on the reforms, in particular on managing employee relations during industrial disputes, in light of the new protection from detriment for taking industrial action.
By end of 2026
Fair Pay Agreement process in adult social care sector to be established
The Employment Rights Act 2025 provides for the establishment of the Adult Social Care Negotiating Body for England, which will have a remit to negotiate a Fair Pay Agreement (FPA) on pay and terms and conditions for adult social care workers.
According to the Government’s response to its recent consultation, and accompanying press release, it intends to bring forward regulations to establish the negotiating body in October 2026, with the negotiating body being set by the end of 2026. The first negotiations will begin in April 2027.
What can HR do now?
- Stay informed: If your organisation is part of the adult social care sector, review the Government’s response to its recent consultation on the design of the fair pay agreement process and look out for the regulations.
Tightening tipping law
The Employment Rights Act 2025 places an obligation on employers to consult worker representatives when developing or revising their tipping policies.
Specifically, employers will be required to review their written policy, in consultation with worker representatives (or affected workers where there are no existing worker representatives), at least once every three years.
Additionally, employers that have carried out a consultation will be required to make available an anonymised written summary of consultation responses to all workers.
The Government has said that this measure will take effect by the end of 2026 (it was previously expected in October 2026).
What can HR do now?
- Audit current practices: Assess current approach to consulting staff to determine whether this is adequate to meet these new consultation requirements.
- Engage in consultation: Respond to the Government’s consultation Make Work Pay: Revised Tipping Code of Practice, in which it is seeking views on the draft revised statutory code of practice, and which is open until 29 September 2026. Monitor further developments, including additional guidance. Employers should continue to follow the existing code of practice in the meantime.
January 2027
According to the Government’s Employment Rights Act 2025 roadmap, the following changes will take effect in January 2027.
Duty to inform workers of their right to join a trade union
The Employment Rights Act 2025 introduces a new duty on employers to provide workers with a written statement informing them of their right to join a trade union. The Government now intends this duty to come into force on 1 January 2027.
The Government has published its response to its consultation on how the new duty will operate. Essentially, the Government will provide a standardised statement, which employers will not be able to amend other than to add specific workplace information.
The statement must be given to new workers at the same time as their written statement of employment particulars. For existing workers, employers will be able to provide the statement either directly or make it reasonably accessible through an indirect method.
Where an indirect method is used, workers will need to be told where the statement can be found and receive an annual reminder that the statement is available and where to find it. Where employers provide the statement directly to existing workers, they will be required to do so annually by 5 April.
What can HR do now?
- Plan how the statement will be provided to new workers: Consider how the statement can be incorporated into onboarding processes so that it is provided alongside the written statement of employment particulars.
- Decide how to communicate with existing workers: Consider whether the statement will be provided directly each year or made continuously and reasonably accessible, for example through existing staff channels.
- Prepare for annual communications: Build the annual statement or reminder into the HR communications calendar.
- Look out for the regulations and standardised statement: The Government has confirmed the approach it intends to take, but employers will need the final regulations and standardised statement to implement the requirement.
Unfair dismissal qualification period reduced to six months
The Employment Rights Act 2025 will reduce the qualifying period for protection from unfair dismissal from two years to six months.
The Government had originally planned to remove the qualifying period completely, so that all employees could bring an unfair dismissal claim from day one in their job. Following pushback from the House of Lords, the Government announced the revised proposal of unfair dismissal protection after six months.
The protection will take effect from 1 January 2027 (meaning that employees hired from 2 July 2026 would gain protection from unfair dismissal after six months).
What can HR do now?
- Audit current practices: Review how often employees are dismissed in the first couple of years of employment, and the reasons for those dismissals. If necessary, consider a different approach to recruitment, onboarding and probation, to rely less on the potential to dismiss an employee if their employment does not work out.
- Review policies and procedures: If you decide to reduce your probationary periods, with the aim that performance reviews can be completed before the employee gains the right to claim unfair dismissal, you should not wait until January 2027.
- Review contracts: Consider using a shorter notice period during the probationary period and provision for pay in lieu of notice, if your contracts do not already include this. Be aware that, if you dismiss an employee without notice, the statutory minimum one week’s notice will be added on to their service for unfair dismissal qualifying purposes.
- Support line managers: Embed procedures to ensure that managers act reasonably when employees are dismissed during or at the end of the probationary period, even where they do not yet have unfair dismissal protection. Check that managers are holding regular performance reviews with probationers and don’t delay identifying and dealing with any issues.
Removal of unfair dismissal compensation cap
The Employment Rights Act 2025 will remove the limit on the compensatory award for unfair dismissal claims (the cap is currently £123,543 or 52 times the claimant’s weekly pay, if lower).
The removal of the cap will apply to dismissals where the effective date of termination is on or after 1 January 2027.
This change is being made alongside a reduction in the unfair dismissal qualifying period from two years to six months.
What can HR do now?
- Implement robust dismissal procedures: The need to have fair and robust dismissal procedures will be even more important, given the potential for an unlimited compensatory unfair dismissal award. The risk will be greater when dismissing high-earners, or lower-paid employees who have found it difficult to obtain alternative employment.
- Plan ahead for settlement negotiations: With an uncapped award, expectations of exiting employees in any settlement negotiations are likely to be higher (particularly in senior roles) where the termination date is on or after 1 January 2027.
Limits on use of fire and rehire
The Employment Rights Act 2025 will make it automatically unfair to dismiss an employee for refusing a “restricted variation” to their contract. A restricted variation includes changes relating to pay, hours of work, holiday entitlement, pensions, clauses permitting unilateral changes, and other terms that will be set out in regulations.
It will also be automatically unfair to dismiss an employee if the principal reason for the dismissal is to employ another person to do the same work as the dismissed employee, or rehire the dismissed employee to carry out the same work but under new terms covering the restricted variations.
There are limited exceptions to these rules if the employer can demonstrate that the business is in financial difficulties and the variation was unavoidable.
The Government has changed its timetable for implementing these measures. They are now expected to come into force in January 2027, pushed back from October 2026.
What can HR do now?
- Reconsider approach to fire and rehire: Think carefully before recommending fire and rehire as a solution to business leaders, considering the significant financial and reputational penalties at stake.
- Stay informed: Look out for the Government’s response to its recent consultation and new regulations that will detail further restricted variations and revisions to the existing code of practice on dismissal and re-engagement, outlining the consultation process that employers will need to follow in cases where fire and rehire is permitted.
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