The Employment Rights Act 2025: What It Means for UK Employers

Almost every employer we speak to still calls it the Employment Rights Bill. It stopped being a bill on 18 December 2025, when it received Royal Assent and became the Employment Rights Act 2025. The name matters less than the sequencing: this is not one change on one date, it is around thirty separate measures being commenced in waves through 2026 and 2027, several of which are still waiting on consultation and secondary legislation.

This guide sets out where things stand as at the review date at the top of this page, what has already taken effect, what is confirmed next, and what we would actually do with the time remaining. Dates in this area have moved more than once, so treat anything marked "expected" as a planning assumption rather than a commitment.

What has already changed

The first substantial wave landed in April 2026 and is now live:

• Statutory sick pay from day one. The three waiting days have gone and the lower earnings limit no longer excludes low earners, who instead receive a percentage of normal weekly earnings.
• Day-one paternity leave and unpaid parental leave. Both are now available from the first day of employment rather than after a qualifying period.
• The Fair Work Agency. A single enforcement body, established in April 2026, bringing together enforcement functions that previously sat across several organisations.
• Doubled protective award. The maximum protective award in collective redundancy cases has doubled, which materially raises the cost of getting consultation wrong.
• Electronic and workplace balloting for statutory trade union ballots, from August 2026.

If your absence policy, family leave policy and payroll process have not been revisited since last year, they are already out of date. That is the cheapest thing on this page to fix.

What lands next: October 2026

1 October 2026 — tribunal time limits double

The time limit for bringing most employment tribunal claims goes from three months to six. It is not retrospective; it applies where the cause of action arises on or after 1 October 2026.

The practical effect is not really about litigation risk, it is about records. A dismissal in November 2026 can produce a claim form in May 2027, by which point the manager who ran the meeting may have left and nobody can find the notes. Retention periods that were built around a three-month window need extending.

30 October 2026 — the harassment duty gets harder

Two changes together:

• The preventative duty rises from taking reasonable steps to taking all reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment of employees and workers.
• Employees gain the ability to bring claims where the employer failed to take all reasonable steps to prevent harassment by third parties — customers, clients, contractors, patients — across the relevant protected characteristics.

"All reasonable steps" is a meaningfully higher bar than the current duty. Regulations are expected to set out steps that will be treated as reasonable, but they will not be a complete list, and an employer who does only what the regulations name will not automatically be safe. Our workplace harassment guide goes through what a defensible set of steps looks like in practice.

30 October 2026 — trade union measures

Employers must tell workers of their right to join a union in the section 1 written statement and at other prescribed points, unions gain a workplace access process with a Central Arbitration Committee route for disputes, representatives get new protections around facilities, and there is protection against detriment for taking industrial action.

The written statement change is easy to miss and easy to comply with. If you issue contracts from a template, it needs amending before the end of October. That is a contract drafting job, not a policy job.

The big one: 1 January 2027

Unfair dismissal at six months, with no cap

Where the effective date of termination falls on or after 1 January 2027:

• The qualifying period for ordinary unfair dismissal drops from two years to six months.
• The cap on the compensatory award is removed.
• The qualifying period for a written statement of reasons for dismissal also drops to six months.
• Claims relating to spent convictions become available from day one.

Note the detail on the effective date of termination: statutory notice counts towards it. Someone dismissed in late December 2026 with notice running into January may well fall on the new side of the line.

The consultation position landed at six months rather than the day-one right originally trailed, which is a genuine softening — but combined with removal of the compensatory cap, the risk profile of a poorly handled dismissal in month seven is much worse than it is today. Our unfair dismissal compensation calculator gives a sense of current exposure; from January 2027 the ceiling on that figure disappears.

Fire and rehire becomes automatically unfair

From January 2027, dismissing someone for refusing to agree most changes to their contract will be automatically unfair, unless the employer is in financial difficulty that affects its ability to continue as a going concern. These claims are available from day one of employment. If you have been planning a contractual harmonisation exercise, the window to do it the conventional way is closing.

Expected during 2027, dates not yet set

The government has not fixed dates for these, but they are firmly on the roadmap and worth factoring into medium-term planning:

• Guaranteed hours for zero-hours and low-hours workers, plus reasonable notice of shifts and payments for short-notice cancellation
• Flexible working: any refusal of a request must be reasonable
• Bereavement leave, including pregnancy loss
• Enhanced dismissal protection during and after pregnancy and statutory family leave
• A workforce-wide threshold for collective redundancy consultation
• Mandatory gender equality and menopause action plans for larger employers
• Regulation of umbrella companies, and restrictions on the misuse of NDAs in harassment and discrimination cases

What we see in practice

The employers who will be caught out by January 2027 are not the ones ignoring the Act. They are the ones who have read about it, updated a policy document, and assumed that was the job done.

The pattern we see repeatedly is a probation process that exists on paper and not in life. A six-month probation period with a review meeting scheduled at month five, which slips, and is held in month seven after the person has already acquired rights. Under the current two-year qualifying period that costs nothing. From January 2027 it converts a routine "it isn't working out" conversation into a dismissal that needs a fair reason, a fair process and a defensible paper trail — with no cap on what a tribunal can award if you get it wrong.

The second pattern is the harassment duty. Most employers have a policy and an e-learning module from three years ago. Almost none can evidence a risk assessment covering third-party contact, which is exactly what the October change makes claimable.

What to do before January 2027

1. Rework probation. Shorten it where you can, diarise reviews properly, and make sure managers know a probation review is a real decision point rather than a formality. Confirm your disciplinary policy actually says what applies during probation.
2. Fix hiring decisions upstream. A six-month qualifying period puts far more weight on selection. Structured interviews and proper references cost less than a dismissal.
3. Update contract templates before 30 October 2026 for the trade union information requirement, and review probation, notice and variation clauses while you are in there.
4. Take the harassment duty seriously. Risk assess third-party contact, refresh training with something people actually attend, record what you did and why, and make reporting genuinely usable. Keep the evidence.
5. Extend record retention to match a six-month claim window, and make sure investigation notes, scoring sheets and meeting records are stored somewhere that survives a manager leaving.
6. Refresh the handbook. Absence, family leave, flexible working and harassment sections all need revisiting. Our staff handbook service does this as one exercise rather than six.
7. Train line managers. Almost every expensive claim we see started with a manager doing something reasonable-sounding without asking anyone first.

Getting help with it

If you would rather not track thirty commencement dates yourself, our employment law advice service covers exactly this: what applies to you, when, and what needs changing. For a structured review of where your documentation currently stands, an HR health check is the usual starting point, and HR consultancy covers the implementation work that follows.

This is general information, current as at the review date shown above, and not legal advice on your situation. Several dates here remain subject to consultation and secondary legislation and may move. For advice on your own arrangements, speak to one of our HR experts.