Employment Rights Act 2025: Upcoming changes and key dates

From 1 October 2026

Employment Tribunal Time Limits – The standard time limit for submitting most employment related claims to an Employment Tribunal will increase to 6 months less a day. The current time limit for most claims is 3 months less a day.

Practical steps:
• Employers should be aware that this may result in an increase in the volume of claims being made and should continue to ensure that due processes are in place to prevent any valid claims arising. Where in doubt, we would recommend that you seek legal advice.
• We would also encourage clients to ensure clear record keeping of employment issues, as employers may ultimately not receive a claim until 10 to 11 months after the relevant triggering event.

From 30 October 2026

Sexual Harassment – Employers must take note of the following changes:
• Employers must take ‘all reasonable steps’ to prevent sexual harassment of their workers. The current law says ‘reasonable steps’.
• Employers will be liable for harassment from third parties, for example customers or clients, unless they have taken all reasonable steps to prevent it.
• ‘Reasonable steps’ when preventing sexual harassment are yet to be defined.

Practical steps: employers should be updating and reviewing risk assessments, particularly for public facing roles. You should also ensure that managers are trained on these changes and what it means.

Trade Unions – The following changes will apply:
• Trade unions will have the right to request an access agreement with businesses that have 21 or more workers. Fines for employer non-compliance will start at £75,000.
• New rights and protections for trade union representatives.

Practical steps: the new legislation includes strict timeframes so we suggest managers are notified regarding the internal contact dealing with any requests to ensure a request is sent to the right person as quickly as possible.

By the End of 2026

Changes to Tipping – Employers will need to:
• Consult either the trade union/worker representatives or directly with workers before creating or reviewing a tipping policy.
• Share an anonymised summary of consultation feedback with affected workers.
• Update their tipping policy at least every 3 years.

Practical steps: where applicable, employers should ensure that there are processes put in place to ensure compliance with this change including setting up reminders within the statutory timeframe for updates.

From 1 January

Changes to Unfair Dismissal Claims – The following changes will take effect:
• Employees will be eligible to bring unfair dismissal claims after 6 months in the job, instead of the current 2 years.
• The statutory cap on compensation for unfair dismissal will be removed. The current cap is the lower of one year’s salary or £123,543.

Practical steps: employers should consider probation periods for new hires so that there is scope for review of performance and extension of the probation period prior to the employee obtaining protection from unfair dismissal.

Other Changes in January (Dates TBD)

‘Fire and Rehire’ – ‘Fire and rehire’ will become an automatically unfair dismissal in most cases.

Practical steps: employers should ensure they audit their employment contracts to understand the existing core contractual terms. If considering contractual changes which could result in ‘fire and rehire’, they may wish to do so sooner rather than later before the law changes; this should be done cautiously and treated as a last resort.

Trade Union Rights – Employers will have a duty to inform workers about their right to join a trade union.

Practical steps: from January 2027, ‘fire and rehire’ should be avoided in most circumstances but certainly in relation to the restricted core contractual terms covered by this change. Please get in touch if you need advice on this.
Employers should also ensure that the government worded statement confirming the right to join a trade union is published on their intranet or make it available by another method. New joiners must receive the statement at the outset of their employment.

Later in 2027 (Dates TBD)

Changes after January 2027 do not have a set date for implementation as of yet and we will provide updates once the dates are confirmed.

Key areas affected:

• Flexible working
• Zero-hours and low-hours contracts
• Mandatory gender pay gap and menopause action plans
• Collective redundancy consultation threshold
• Bereavement leave
• Trade unions
• Pregnancy and maternity rights

Please note that all future dates remain subject to parliamentary processes and may change. Longer-term timings will remain under review and subject to government consultations. We will provide updates once the government publishes information in this regard.

How Teacher Stern can help

If you have any questions on any of the above or would like advice on how these changes may affect your business specifically then please speak to Matthew Cranton.

 

The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter.

If you have any questions about the topics raised in this article, please feel free to contact a member of the Employment team.