The below are changes that look likely to come into law in either April or October 2027, however no specific date has been set for these. They will all be subject to amendment by the time they have been consulted on, but below are summaries of the Governments plans as we know them today.
- Gender pay gap reporting
- UK employers with 250 or more employees will be required to implement and publish equality action plans, including specific measures addressing the gender pay gap and supporting women during menopause. These plans will be mandatory, building on the existing voluntary publication of gender pay gap reports. The reforms aim to stimulate initiatives to close pay gaps and create more supportive workplaces. In addition, regulations will require employers to name the providers they contract with for outsourced workers in their gender pay gap reports.
- Menopause action plans
- There will be a requirement for larger companies to introduce a Menopause policy and ensure that they treat anyone suffering with the menopause in line with the policy which includes making reasonable adjustments. While menopause is not classed as a protected characteristic in its own right, it is however covered by all 3 protected characteristics of Age, Disability and Sex, so you must ensure you have something set up. There is a Menopause policy on the Parish HR website (under “During Employment”) that you can adapt if you wish. There is also an Andropause policy (Male Menopause) you may wish to adapt. You should also ensure that where an employee notifies you that they are going through the menopause or andropause, that you ensure reasonable adjustments are put in place to support them during this time. There is an employee needs assessment template that you can use to write this information down, and ensure your employee is supported.
- Increased dismissal protection for pregnant workers:
- Labour is also considering an outright ban on dismissing women who are pregnant, on maternity leave, or during their first 6 months of returning to work after maternity leave. Currently, there is some protection when an employer is making redundancies for those who are pregnant, those on maternity or other family-related leave, and also for a fixed period on return to work. Those protections ensure that they have the rights to be offered suitable alternative employment before other employees in a redundancy situation. This reform looks at enhancing protection by making it unlawful to dismiss those who are pregnant on maternity or other family-related leave, or those after a fixed period, after a return to work, except in specific circumstances.
- While the right to not be made redundant currently lasts for 18 months after the baby’s birth/adoption, the new neo-natal act which came out in April 2025, also provides protection for anyone taking neo-natal leave. This means that if their baby is in neo-natal care within the first 28 days of being born and stay there for 7 days, they are entitled to additional protection from redundancy. If a person is taking paternity leave or shared parental leave for a period of 6 weeks or more, their protection from redundancy also increases to 18 months from the child's birth.
- A consultation on the details of this reform is expected in autumn 2025.
- Prevention of Sexual Harassment:
- a new power will be added to the bill, to decide on regulations which specify what the “All reasonable steps” are, to prevent Sexual Harassment, in order to determine if an employer has taken all the reasonable steps that they should have to prevent sexual harassment of their employees.
- Trade Union blacklisting protection
- There will be an extension on the prohibition of blacklisting based on trade union membership or activity. This is intended to cover lists created by artificial intelligence or predictive technology.
- Industrial Relations Framework:
- there will be a new industrial relations framework introduced to foster productive and constructive engagement where disputes arise. The consultation on this was concluded earlier this year which highlighted the government's proposal to build a modern positive industrial relations framework around the four key principles of:
- Collaboration and partnership between unions, businesses and employees
- Ensuring that proportionality is at the heart of the framework.
- That relationships are built on trust and accountability.
- Balancing the interests of all parties.
- there will be a new industrial relations framework introduced to foster productive and constructive engagement where disputes arise. The consultation on this was concluded earlier this year which highlighted the government's proposal to build a modern positive industrial relations framework around the four key principles of:
- Regulation of Umbrella Companies:
- The bill expands the definition of agency to include umbrella companies. This enables enforcement by the employment agency standards inspectorate and then the fair work agency. After the planned consultation on regulation of umbrella companies in autumn 2025, the government will amend the law to set out framework for umbrella companies.
- Collective redundancy thresholds:
- The current collective consultation rules will remain in place, triggering where 20 or more employees are to be made redundant at one establishment within a 90-day period. What this means in practice is a company closing 10 restaurants that each have 10 members of staff, may not be legally required to collectively consult, as there are less than 20 employees in each establishment. The reforms in the Employment Rights Bill will add an additional trigger alongside this, that means employers will also need to consider the number of redundancies made across the organisation as a whole, not just individual places of work.
- Refusals of flexible working requests:
- The right to request flexible working became a day one right on 6 April 2024. The government will go further, making it a day one right to flexible working (rather than a right to request flexible working), as far as is reasonable.
- Currently, an employee can request flexible working from their first day of employment and an employer can only refuse based on one of eight statutory grounds:
- it would harm the employees performance in the job - or the performance of their colleagues
- it would cost the business money
- it would reduce quality or standards
- the employer would struggle to meet customer demand
- the employer would have trouble hiring extra staff to cover your work
- the employer would struggle to reorganise work among your colleagues
- there isn’t enough work to do at the times you want to work
- the employer is planning changes to the business structure and the request wouldn’t fit with the changes
Under the new changes, an employer still needs one of the eight reasons to turn down a request, but the employer must state, in detail, the grounds for refusing it and why they believe the refusal is reasonable. A consultation will be undertaken in winter 2026 before regulations are made and the reform brought into force.
- Bereavement Leave:
- One week of unpaid bereavement leave, although potentially the government may decide to agree statutory pay, in line with Statutory Sick Pay
- This is in addition to the already existing right to parental bereavement leave. A recent amendment to the bill sets out a right to bereavement leave for parents who experience pregnancy loss, sometimes called a miscarriage, before 24 weeks of pregnancy.
- Further regulations will also clarify which relationships this right applies to.
- Currently, it's up to employers to determine their policy on bereavement leave, so an employer may need to change their policies once we have more details about entitlement and pay.
- Restriction of the use of Zero-hours contracts, including guaranteed hours measures
- A while ago the conservative government planned to bring in an act called “Workers predictable hours”. Labour have now scrapped that and have decided that they will limit how zero hours contracts can be used. Their original plan was a flat out ban on zero hours, but after some consultation have conceded that zero hours contracts do have their purpose if they are used correctly (for workers with irregular hours and who only work when needed). The government plan to ban “exploitative” zero hours contracts which is where someone regular works the same hours each week such as full-time hours but is on a zero-hour contract. Some employers use this as a means to remove people from their business by dropping their hours, rather than going through a dismissal process or redundancy process, and it is this which Labour, want to stamp out. This also includes where zero hours of agency workers are affected by the reforms.
- The law will introduce a right for workers to be offered guaranteed hours if they qualify by working a number of hours regularly for a specific length of time, unless exceptions apply. The exact details of this will be set out in the regulations following the consultation. A worker can still choose to be employed on a zero-hours basis, even where an offer of guaranteed hours is made.
- The law will also introduce a right to payment where a shift is cancelled, moved to a date in the future, or cut short by the employer. The amount of this payment will form part of the consultation before regulations are made.
- Day 1 protection from unfair dismissal
- One of the things that the government is doing is removing the 2 year minimum employment term before someone can raise an unfair dismissal case. At the moment only those who have been discriminated against for having a protected characteristic can raise an unfair dismissal claim within this 2-year period. However, when the government do release this policy, anyone can claim unfair dismissal from their first day of employment. The exception to this is when someone is in their probation period, so having a probation period is absolutely critical to avoid a long and drawn-out performance/ capability management process. It is likely that the government are looking at a 9-month probation period maximum. At the DBF we have probation periods of 6 months, with the option to extend for a further 3 months if needed.