Once Employment Rights Bill receives Royal Assent or “soon afterwards”

• Trade union changes:
  • Repeal of most of the Trade Union Act 2016. The most notable aspect of this Act was the additional minimum turnout levels for important public services required for protected industrial action. However, the government has indicated that not all parts will be repealed in this first phase – we currently don’t have clarity on which parts will be covered.
  • Repeal of the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act 2023.
  • Enhancing protections against dismissal for taking industrial action (i.e., by removing the time period in which a dismissal must occur for it to be automatically unfair).
  • Simplifying industrial action and ballot notices with less prescriptive content requirements. The notice period required for industrial action will also be reduced from 14 days to 10 days and a valid ballot will give a mandate for industrial action for 12 months (instead of the current 6).
• In terms of timeframes, Royal Assent is likely to be imminent but “soon afterwards” is less clear. The latest publicly available iteration of the Bill provided that various provisions would come into force within two months of Royal Assent. However, that list includes items which have been pushed back and other items which aren’t on that list have been brought into this first phase.

6 April 2026

• Collective redundancy protective award – compensation maximum to double, from 90 days’ gross pay to 180 days’ gross pay (but the “ban” on fire and re-hire and the collective consultation thresholds will not come in until later – see below).
• Paternity leave and unpaid parental leave – will become day one rights.
• Whistleblowers – sexual harassment will be a specific protected disclosure.
• Statutory Sick Pay – removal of the “lower earnings limit” which is currently needed before an individual is entitled to sick pay and removal of the three-day waiting period.
• Fair Work Agency to be established – an enforcement body to police compliance with laws such as national minimum wage, modern slavery and holiday pay.
• Trade unions:
  • Simplifying the trade union recognition process (including the ability for the government to lower the required percentage of trade union members in the bargaining unit to a figure between 2% and 10% (currently 10%)).
  • Electronic and workplace balloting to be introduced.

1 October 2026

• Fire and re-hire – making it automatically unfair to dismiss an employee for not agreeing to a variation to their contract (or to dismiss them to employ a new person on the new terms), save only in circumstances where the business essentially had to make the changes in order to continue operating due to financial difficulties.
• Employment tribunal time limits – to increase from three to six months after the dismissal or act complained of.
• Harassment:
  • The current duty on employers to take “reasonable steps” to prevent sexual harassment will be extended to take “all” reasonable steps. The upshot is that failing to take just one further step which the tribunal considers to be reasonable will leave the employer in breach.
  • A new obligation on employers to take all reasonable steps to prevent harassment of employees by third parties.  While similar to the above duty, it is much wider as: (i) it extends to all types of harassment, not just sexual harassment; (ii) it covers the actions of third parties such as customers and clients; and (iii) it can be brought as a standalone claim (the current duty may increase compensation under a successful harassment claim which includes sexual harassment).
• Trade unions:
  • Duty to inform workers of right to join a union.
  • Strengthen trade unions’ right of access.
  • New rights and protections for trade union representatives.
  • Protection against detriment for taking industrial action (which closes an existing legislative loophole).
• Tips – workforce consultation to be required in relation to a business’s written policy on the distribution of tips (which seeks to ensure fairer allocation).

2027 (no clear dates given)

• Day 1 protection from unfair dismissal – this is one of the most anticipated changes. Employees will have the right to not be unfairly dismissed from day one, but there is provision for the government to effectively create a statutory probation period in which a “modified” process for certain types of dismissal. The government will consult on how that initial period of employment might work during the second half of 2025.
• Zero-hours and low-hours contracts – the obligation to offer guaranteed hours to zero-hours (and low-hours) workers if they have worked, on average, a certain number of hours over a reference period. The protection will extend to agency workers (with responsibility for offering the guaranteed hours likely falling on the end-hirer as opposed to the agency).
• Rights for pregnant workers and new mothers – further protections from dismissal for pregnant women and new mothers (for broadly the six months after returning to work).
• Collective redundancy – regulations to set an additional threshold of proposed redundancies for requiring an employer to undertake collective consultation looking across all an employer’s establishments (where the existing threshold is limited to 20+ employees at one establishment).
• Flexible working rights – in addition to needing one of the eight statutory grounds to refuse a flexible working request, any refusal must also be reasonable.
• Sexual harassment prevention – ability to introduce regulations to specifically define what are “reasonable steps” to prevent sexual harassment.
• Trade unions:
  • Blacklisting protections.
  • Reform of industrial relations framework.
• Gender pay gap and menopause – employers with at least 250 employees will be required to create and publish ‘equality action plans’ relating to both gender pay and how they are supporting employees going through menopause (employers can voluntarily commence this April 2026).
• Bereavement leave – to be extended to certain relationships beyond parent and child (and also extended to include pregnancy loss pre-24 weeks).
• Regulation of “umbrella companies” – so that they are brought within the definition of employment businesses (broadly, businesses supplying temporary workers) and regulated in the same way.

The Employment Rights Bill: How we can help

If you need support with implementing the new employment rights in your organisation, please get in touch with Charlotte Smith, Lucy Gordon, Shabana Muneer and Andrew Rayment.