Some aspects of the new Employment Rights Act come into force this week. What are the changes practice managers need to be aware of so they can get prepared and what lies in store for the rest of 2026 and beyond? HR expert George Lepine explains.
Just before Christmas, the Employment Rights Act 2025 became law after a long period of going back and forth between the Houses of Commons and Lords. During that time, it was the subject of scaremongering headlines as organisations that represent businesses voiced their worries.
Among the concerns raised were fears that the cost of implementation might overburden small and medium-sized businesses, which is of course a description of GP practices.
But Dr Duncan Brown, independent adviser and principal associate at the Institute for Employment Studies says it is a ‘trap’ to see the Act as a cost burden. Rather than thinking like ‘short-sighted business leaders’, he urges employers to view it as an investment in ‘high-performance working, good jobs and working practices’.
Regardless of how employers choose to see the Act, the Government has agreed to a phased implementation of the changes. This allows time for consultation and gives organisations space to prepare.
It’s an opportunity for practice managers to review existing policies and, where necessary, begin work on updating them in readiness for the new legislation. There are changes even you could implement now to demonstrate a proactive approach to employee wellbeing and good practice.
So, what are the areas that practice managers need to think about? And when do the changes come in?
Already in place
Bereaved partners’ rights
The Paternity Leave (Bereavement) Act (Commencement) Regulations 2024 were brought in on 29 December 2025. The regulations mean that, where the mother or adopter of a child dies in childbirth or within one year of the birth or adoption, the father or partner of the of the mother or adopter now has the right to take statutory paternity leave without the requirement for 26 weeks’ service and even if they have taken a period of shared parental leave. Although not part of the Employment Rights Act, this is a theme that the Act picks up.
18 February 2026
Paternity leave and unpaid parental leave
At present, one of the eligibility factors for paternity leave of either one week or two consecutive weeks is that the employee must have 26 weeks’ continuous service. This will become a day-one right. Eligibility for paternity pay remains unchanged at 26 weeks continuous service.
Parental leave will also become a day-one right. This is a change from an eligible employee being entitled to unpaid parental leave – a maximum of 18 weeks – to care for a child after one year’s continuous service with their employer. The Government has confirmed that these changes to parental leave are expected to commence on 18 February enabling leave to be taken from 6 April.
Trade unions
The time needed to give notice of industrial action will reduce to 10 days, instead of 14 days. There will also be increased protection for those taking part in industrial action. Dismissal for taking part in industrial action will become ‘automatically unfair’. This will remove the current 12-week limit for claiming unfair dismissal.
Among other things: there will be an automatic opt in to the political funds of trade unions; the information that trade unions are required to provide about industrial action ballots and on voting papers will be reduced; and the mandate period for industrial action following a successful ballot will go from 6 to 12 months and protection against dismissal for industrial action will apply regardless of the length of the action.
April 2026
Statutory Sick Pay
From April, the lower earnings limit will be removed from Statutory Sick Pay (SSP) – currently, workers must earn a minimum amount to be eligible. This means that all workers will be entitled to SSP at a rate of either 80% of weekly earnings, or the statutory rate, whichever is lower.
Another change is that SSP will become payable from the first day of absence. At present, it only kicks in after the first three consecutive days of sickness.
So, now would be a good time to take another look at your policy for managing sickness absence.
Evidence tells us that there are two things that make a real difference to managing sickness absence – return to work interviews and trigger points for taking action (such as the number of absences an employee has within a certain time period). Do you have these in your policy? And what steps do you have in place to promote employee wellbeing?
Further bereaved partners’ rights
A new right to Bereaved Partner’s Paternity Leave will support employees who lose the mother or primary adopter of their child within the first year of their child’s life or adoption. This is a day one right, meaning employees are eligible from their first day of employment. Employees may be eligible for up to 52 weeks of leave, depending on when the bereavement occurs. There is no statutory pay requirement – paid leave is at employer discretion.
Redundancy
There will be an increase to the maximum award that an Employment Tribunal can make against an employer for failing to fulfil its obligations to consult collectively in a redundancy situation from 90 days’ pay to 180 days’ pay.
Currently, the requirement to consult collectively kicks in when the employer proposes 20 or more redundancies at one establishment. This will be extended to cover redundancies across the organisation as a whole rather than one site. The threshold at which this new requirement kicks will be defined in regulations in 2027.
More trade unions
There will be a simplified trade union recognition process and the rules around balloting. Currently recognition must be supported by 40% of those entitled to vote. This will be replaced with a simple majority. The requirement to demonstrate that there is likely to be majority support for recognition at the application stage will also be scrapped.
Whistleblowing protections
Sexual harassment will be added to the list of qualifying disclosures. This means that employees will be protected from being subjected to a detriment (being treated badly or unfairly) for making a disclosure around sexual harassment.
Fair Work Agency
This body will be set up by the Government. The Department for Business and Trade explains that this will ‘bring together existing state enforcement functions and, over time, take on enforcement of a wider range of employment rights’. For example, it will be able to bring claims on behalf of an employee and have powers to investigate and take action against employers who flout the law.
October 2026
Sexual harassment
Employers will be required to take ‘all reasonable steps’ to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace.
The Worker Protection (Amendment of Equality Act 2010) Act 2023, which took effect in October 2024, introduced an anticipatory duty on employers to take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment. This means employers must be proactive and not wait for sexual harassment to happen before acting.
The new Act has now added the word ‘all’ which points to a higher standard to be met, with regulations specifying what is regarded as ‘reasonable’ expected in 2027.
The Act will also introduce a duty to protect employees from harassment by third parties. A recent article set out the practical steps you should take as an employer.
Fire and rehire
This was previously billed as a ban on the practice of dismissing and re-engaging employees who fail to agree to a change in their contract of employment. But It’s turning out to be a lot less than that.
As it now stands, the Act will mean that if employees are dismissed for failing to agree to a ‘restricted variation’ to their terms and conditions – or so that they can be replaced by other workers doing the same job on different (less favourable) terms – those dismissals will be treated as automatically unfair. The exception would be if the employer can show financial difficulties that demonstrably make the need to change terms and conditions unavoidable. Restricted variations refer to pay, pensions, working hours and duration and timing of shifts. So, nothing else is covered.
Fire and rehire was always fraught with practical difficulties so this is unlikely to be seen as a change for the worse.
Employment tribunals
The time limit for bringing a tribunal claim will be extended from three to six months. While this may see an increase in the number of claims to employment tribunals, those in favour argue that it will also result in increased access to justice and better prepared claims.
More trade union rights
Employers will be required to inform workers of their right to join a trade union. This might be done through the written statement of main terms and conditions of employment that employees must receive when they start work with a new employer or through a separate statement.
New rights and protections for trade union reps will be introduced along with extended protections against detriments for taking industrial action. Currently there is no protection from detriments short of dismissal. The Act will change that.
Coming in 2027
There will a further implementation phase in 2027, bringing in more change.
Unfair dismissal
The original intention was to give employees a day-one right to make a claim for unfair dismissal. However, the Government accepted a compromise in the interests of getting the legislation through the House of Lords and agreed a six-month qualifying period and the removal of the cap on ordinary unfair dismissal claims.
The change will apply to dismissals from 1 January 2027 so any employee with six months’ continuous service (i.e. who started on or after 1 July 2026) by that date will be protected. So, now would be a good time to review your approach to recruitment, induction and the management of probation periods.. The removal of the cap on unfair dismissal claims will come into effect at the same time.
Flexible working
Employers will still have the right to refuse a flexible working request on one or more of the eight current grounds. However, from 2027 they will have to explain in writing the reason for any refusal and why their decision to refuse on one or more of those eight grounds was reasonable.
Zero-hours contracts
This will introduce a duty to offer guaranteed hours to qualifying workers. The number of hours will reflect the hours they worked over a reference period (likely to be 12 weeks). A qualifying worker is someone on a zero hours contract or with a low number of qualifying hours. However, the Act does not specify what the threshold is for ‘a low number of qualifying hours’.
There will also be a requirement to give reasonable notice of changes to shifts and compensation for cancelled shifts.
Bereavement leave
The Act introduces a day one right to one week of unpaid bereavement leave for employees to be taken within 56 days of the loss of a loved one. Response to the consultation on whether this should be extended further are currently being considered by government.
If you don’t have a bereavement leave policy, why not do this now? Bereavement leave is a visible demonstration of support for an employee at a difficult time. It will increase employee engagement and retention and by contributing to wellbeing may avoid problems later on.
The Act will also extend paid parental bereavement leave (currently employees can take up to two weeks’ leave if their child dies or is stillborn after 24 weeks of pregnancy) for pregnancy loss occurring before the 24th week of pregnancy.
These are changes that practices could implement now to demonstrate a proactive approach to employee wellbeing.
Pregnancy rights
Pregnant workers will receive increased protection against dismissals (that are not redundancies) during pregnancy, maternity leave or for six months after the employee has returned to work. The protections will be extended to adoption leave, shared parental leave, neonatal care leave and bereaved partners’ paternity leave.
The protections are not yet clear as they are the subject of a consultation that ended in January 2026. However, this may be a good opportunity to review your existing policies to ensure that they are up to date with changes that already happened in 2024) (see the Protection from Redundancy (Pregnancy and Family Leave)Act 2023) and ready for those still to come.
George Lepine is an independent human resources consultant. Find out more about his work on policy, strategy, organisation development, leadership and team building here
