New timeline published for UK employment law changes

The Government has published a roadmap outlining when key employment law changes are expected to come into effect.

It has also published the details of new plans to restrict the use of non-disclosure agreements and updated its stance on allowing employers to ‘fire and rehire’ to achieve changes to employee contractual terms. We highlight what employers need to know to stay ahead. 

Key issues: 

The key points to take away from the Government’s timeline for bringing their employment law reforms into effect and their latest changes to the Employment Rights Bill are:

• Day one unfair dismissal rights will not come in until 2027 – this delay gives employers more time to ensure that their recruitment and vetting processes are robust and to tighten up their performance and capability management processes. We anticipate that the Government will also provide more information about the “initial employment period” and what process employers will need to follow to dismiss employees fairly during that time. 
• New area for reform - the latest version of the Employment Rights Bill now includes a proposal that would make Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDA) covering harassment and discrimination between an employer and worker void. It goes without saying that this would have a big impact on employers, who routinely include non-disclosure and non-disparagement clauses in settlement agreements. The Government may allow some NDAs in an ‘excepted agreement’ and we will have to wait for more detail on this.
• Fire and rehire - the government plans to introduce new rules in October 2026 making it automatically unfair to dismiss someone either for refusing to agree to a variation in their employment contract or to replace them with someone on varied terms and conditions doing essentially the same work. Under newly revised proposals, the new right will only apply when the proposed variation to the contract is a 'restricted variation'. “Restricted variations” will cover changes to pay, pensions, hours of work, holiday entitlement and anything else the Secretary of State sets out in Regulations. It will also include a contractual change to add a variation clause.

Timeline for employment law changes

The Government has published a roadmap setting out when its employment law reforms are expected to be implemented.

Here’s our summary of the key changes that you should know about:

From 2025 (after the Employment Rights Bill is passed):

• Industrial action: 
  • Repeal of the previous Government’s legislation on minimum service levels during strikes and measures to undo the majority of the restrictions on calling strike action introduced by Conservative-led Governments over recent years
  • Further protections against dismissal for taking industrial action will be enacted.

From April 2026: 

• Statutory Sick Pay (SSP): removing the waiting period so that SSP will be payable from the first day of absence and removing the lower earnings limit to make it available to all employees regardless of their earnings
• Paternity Leave and unpaid Parental Leave: allowing employees to take these forms of leave from day one of employment 
• Collective redundancy protective awards: doubling the protective award for breach of collective redundancy consultation requirements from 90 to 180 days gross pay per employee 
• Trade union recognition and balloting: simplifying the trade union recognition process and introducing digital workplace balloting 
• Establishing the Fair Work Agency to enforce some employment rights.

From October 2026:

• Tribunal time limits: extending the time limit for employees to claim against their employer in an Employment Tribunal from 3 months to 6 months 
• Preventing sexual harassment: requiring employers to take “all reasonable steps” to prevent sexual harassment of their employees. The present position is to take “reasonable steps” 
• Restrictions to ‘fire & rehire’: significantly limiting the circumstances in which an employer can terminate and offer re-engagement on new terms of employment to employees (see above)
• Whistleblowing protections: increasing the protections so as to encourage the reporting of wrongdoing without fear of retaliation
• Stronger tipping laws 
• Trade unions: introducing various measures including new rights and protections for trade union representatives, extending protections against detriments for taking industrial action and strengthening trade unions’ rights of access. 

From 2027:

• Unfair dismissal: day one unfair dismissal rights (see above)
• Zero/low hours workers and agency workers: introducing new measures aimed at providing these workers with stable hours and a predictable income 
• Umbrella companies: introducing new measures to strengthen the regulation of umbrella companies (intermediatory companies that engage individuals to work for an end user) 
• Bereavement leave: providing all employees with the right to take time off work to grieve 
• Mandatory gender pay gap and menopause action plans: introducing this initially on a voluntary basis in April 2026, and on a compulsory basis in 2027
• Enhanced dismissal protections for pregnant women and new mothers
• Further harassment protections: specifying reasonable steps which will help determine whether an employer has taken “all reasonable steps” to prevent sexual harassment 
• Changes to flexible working: employers having to explain in writing why any refusal to agree a request for flexible working is reasonable.

We will keep you up to date with the developments but for specific queries on any of these topics please get in touch.