The headline provisions of the Employment Rights Act 2025 (ERA 2025) are set to come into force during 2027. The Government is yet to finalise the details of many of its plans for 2027 and will be carrying out consultations during 2026 to inform how these will take shape.
Unfair dismissal
The ERA 2025 will reduce this qualifying period to six months, meaning that after six months’ service employees will be able to claim unfair dismissal and also have the right to receive written reasons of dismissal. The Government has confirmed it intends to implement this on 1 January 2027 and will apply retrospectively.
This will mean that any employee with at least six months’ service from 1 January 2027 will be protected from unfair dismissal, eg:
- employees who started on or before 1 January 2025 will see no impact (they will have two years’ service on 1 January 2027)
- employees who started on, or start between, 2 January 2025 and 1 July 2026 will gain unfair dismissal rights on 1 January 2027 (sooner than they would under the current law)
- employees who start on or after 2 July 2026 will gain the right to claim unfair dismissal when they hit six months’ service.
Additionally, the compensation cap for successful unfair dismissal claims will be removed. This will not change the way an ET assesses the level of award in any claims but it will mean there is no upper limit to those claims.
This change to unfair dismissal could impact an employer’s contractual probation period. With the amount of time employers have to dismiss without risk of an unfair dismissal claim reducing significantly, probation periods will need to be reviewed and possibly reduced in length if they take the employee to or beyond six months’ service.
Check out our GLU webinar catch up for more information on what the changes mean for you:
What the new Employment Rights Act 2025 means for you
Zero-hour contracts
The ERA 2025 contains provisions relating to zero hours, low hours and agency workers. These will give these workers the following new rights:
- reasonable notice of changed shifts
- compensation for cancelled or curtailed shifts, at an amount proportionate to the notice given of the cancellation or curtailment
- the right to a guaranteed hours contract that reflects the number of hours they regularly work based on a 12-week period
- the right to receive relevant information regarding guaranteed hours contracts where the worker may become eligible in future for one.
More detail is needed before a proper picture can be drawn of how zero-hours contracts can continue to be used once the new laws are implemented but it is clear that all zero-hours contracts in use in Great Britain will need to be reviewed for compliance.
Protections for pregnant workers
Under the ERA 2025, pregnant employees and those on maternity, adoption, shared parental, bereaved partner’s paternity (when it is in place) and neonatal care leave, and for a period after, will be given additional protection against dismissal, extending beyond the existing protections already in place in relation to redundancy.
Redundancy
The ERA 2025 will change the rules on the thresholds on collective redundancy consultation in multiple site redundancies affecting 20 or more employees.
The provisions in the ERA 2025 will introduce a new threshold for determining whether collective consultation should take place. This will be:
- 20 or more employees at one establishment
- at least the "threshold number of employees", as defined in a new section of Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992.
The Government will carry out consultation to determine the new threshold required to trigger collective consultation in these situations.
Bereavement leave
The right to take bereavement leave will be introduced by the ERA 2025.
Secondary legislation is needed to set out the specifics of how this works, including the relationship needed to qualify for this leave and its duration (which will be at least one week). There are no plans to extend Statutory Parental Bereavement Pay to this extended bereavement leave, meaning it will be unpaid.
Flexible working
The ERA 2025 will introduce the requirement that employers must only refuse a flexible working request if it considers one of the statutory grounds in the ERA 1996 applies and where it is reasonable to do so.
Equality action plans
Large employers (those with more than 250 employees) will be required to produce Menopause Action Plans setting out how the organisation will support employees going through the menopause. Under the ERA 2025, they will have to also create action plans to address gender pay gaps.
Other provisions
Whilst it is expected that provisions introducing the requirement to take all reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment will come into force from October 2026, the power for the Government to make regulations that specify the steps that are to be regarded as reasonable are not set to come into force until 2027.
Further provisions include:
- tighter regulations of umbrella companies
- the introduction of an industrial relations framework and blacklisting provisions.
Takeaway
2027 will see the final wave of reforms under the ERA 2025 come into force. We don’t yet know exactly the full extent of the changes that these will bring, as the Government has not yet published the secondary legislation that will contain these details. It therefore remains important to continue monitoring the information coming from the Government.
For more information, catch up on our GLU webinar:
