This phase-by-phase roadmap shows when key reforms have taken effect/are expected to take effect. While the timeline may shift as consultations and regulations unfold, it’s designed to help employers stay informed, engage early, and prepare for what’s coming.
Note that this timeline is subject to change and does not include every measure in the Employment Rights Act; it focuses on measures that we consider to be of most relevance to the employers we advise.
December 2025
- Repeal of the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act 2023 (which allowed employers to set minimum service levels that had to be maintained during strikes in certain key sectors such as health, transport, fire and rescue, etc)
From 18 February 2026
- Strengthened protection from dismissal for participating in industrial action
- Simplification of ballot and notice rules for industrial action
From 6 April 2026
- Day-one family rights: paternity and unpaid parental leave
- Removal of the requirement for paternity leave to be taken before shared parental leave (or lost)
- Statutory sick pay available from day one and for low-paid workers
- Doubling of maximum collective redundancy protective awards
- Simplified trade union recognition
- Sexual harassment counts as a whistleblowing qualifying disclosure
- Holiday record-keeping requirements (to be enforced by the FWA)
- Introduction of bereaved partner’s paternity leave
- Voluntary action plans on menopause and gender equality
- Guidance on action plans
From 7 April 2026
- Launch of the Fair Work Agency (FWA) to enforce labour standards
Expected to take effect on 25 August 2026
- Electronic and workplace balloting for industrial action ballots
Expected to take effect on 1 October 2026
- Extended tribunal claim time limits (for breach of employment contract claims in Scotland this change will take place on 9 November 2026)
Expected to take effect on 30 October 2026
- Boost to trade union access rights
- Duty to inform workers of their right to join a union
- New rights and protections for trade union reps
- Extended protections against detriment for taking industrial action
- Reforms to access and unfair practices during the recognition and derecognition process
- Increased protections against sexual harassment, i.e. to take ‘all reasonable steps’ to prevent it
- Employers to be liable for harassment from third parties (in respect of all harassment, not just sexual harassment)
- New power enabling regulations to be made (at a later date) specifying evidence-based steps employers must take to prevent sexual harassment
Other measures expected in October 2026
- Reinstatement of the two-tier code to ensure outsourced private sector employees are offered no less favourable terms and conditions to employees transferred from the public sector
Expected to take effect from January 2027
- Reduction of unfair dismissal qualifying period from two years to six months (from 1 January 2027)
- Removal of the cap on unfair dismissal compensation
- Fire and rehire protections
Expected to take effect during 2027
- Restrictions on zero and low hours contracts (guaranteed hours offers)
- Right to reasonable notice of shifts and shift changes
- Equality action plans (with introduction on a voluntary basis from April 2026)
- New protections from dismissal for pregnant workers and those returning from maternity leave
- Introduction of statutory bereavement leave
- Statutory bereavement leave for pregnancy loss before 24 weeks
- Strengthening of flexible working rights
- Change to threshold triggering collective redundancy consultation
- Electronic and workplace balloting for recognition and derecognition ballots
- Extending blacklisting protections
- Prohibition on non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) concerning discrimination and harassment