Employment Rights Bill Act Timeline

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The Employment Rights Act, which received Royal Assent on 18 December 2025, has been described as the biggest upgrade to workers’ rights for a generation.

The Act was subject to extensive debate throughout its Parliamentary passage until the House of Lords finally conceded to the amendments proposed by the House of Commons.

Implementation of many of the Act’s provisions will be staggered over the upcoming months and years with much of the detail to be determined through further consultation. The Government will now turn to defining the detailed policy in secondary legislation and regulations, supported by further guidance and Codes of Practice. This means a busy consultation period lies ahead for 2026.

Our Employment Team have set out all of the latest developments for you, so you can keep on top of the Act and what it means for your businesses. You can use our tracker to see how the Employment Rights Act evolved, as well as when its provisions are likely to come into effect.

10 October 2024 - The Bill is presented to the House of Commons

The Bill is presented to the House of Commons and has its first reading. The Government publishes ‘Next Steps to Make Work Pay’ setting out how it will deliver its plan to make work pay.

21 October 2024 - The Bill has its second reading in the House of Commons

21 October 2024 - The Government publishes 4 consultations on the Bill

The Government publishes 4 consultations on the Bill dealing with industrial relations, collective redundancy and fire and rehire, zero hours contracts and agency workers and statutory sick pay.

26 November 2024 - House of Commons Committee Stage

27 November 2024 - An amendment paper is published

An amendment paper is published, listing all amendments tabled to the Bill. The most important one would extend the time limit for bringing tribunal claims from 3 to 6 months.

2 December 2024 - The Department for Business & Trade is consulting on:

Modernising the legislative framework that underpins trade unions
Strengthening remedies against abuse of rules on collective redundancy and fire and rehire (i.e. introducing interim relief claims in protective award and fire and rehire cases).
The application of the zero hours contracts measures in the Bill to agency workers

4 December 2024 - The Department for Work and Pensions consult on Statutory Sick Pay

The Department for Work and Pensions is consulting on making changes to Statutory Sick Pay.

16 January 2025 - Commons Committee Stage completes

Commons Committee Stage completes and the Committee approves all of the Government’s amendments.

4 March 2025 - The Government publishes its responses to the 4 consultations on the Bill

The Government publishes its responses to the 4 consultations on the Bill that closed in December 2024.

4 & 5 March 2025 - The Government publishes a large number of amendments to the Bill

The Government publishes a large number of amendments to the Bill for consideration at the report stage.

11 & 12 March 2025 - Commons report stage

Commons report stage and third reading of the Bill.

14 March 2025 - First Reading

The Bill is introduced in the House of Lords and has its first reading.

27 March 2025 - Second Reading

The Bill is introduced in The Bill has its second reading in the House of Lords.

23 April 2025 - Amendment Paper

Government amendments to the Bill are published for consideration at the House of Lords Committee stage.

29 April 2025 - House of Lords Committee Stage

The Committee Stage in the House of Lords begins.

25 June 2025 - Finished Committee Stage

The Committee Stage in the House of Lords comes to an end.

July 2025 - Government plan to implement the Employment Rights Bill

The Government has published an ‘implementation roadmap’ for the Employment Rights Bill. It highlights that significant changes will arrive from as soon as April next year.

14 July 2025 - Lords Report Stage

Summer/Autumn 2025 - Further Consultation

Consultation due to take place on day 1 unfair dismissal rights, fair pay agreement for the Adult Social Care Sector and reinstating the school support staff negotiating body.

Autumn 2025 - Further Consultation

Consultation due to take place on Trade Union measures (e.g. balloting, simplifying trade union recognition, duty to inform staff of right to join a trade union), fire and rehire and regulating umbrella companies, bereavement leave, rights to pregnant workers and ending the use of exploitative zero hours contracts.

Ping Pong Stage

The House of Lords made various amendments that were rejected by the House of Commons. The House of Commons considered the latest amendments from the Lords on 5 November 2025.

There have been some key changes since the Bill was introduced in October

Some notable changes since the Bill was first introduced include:

Fire and Rehire - this is where a employee is dismissed for refusing to agree to change terms of employment, and the employer offers to rehire them on those new terms. This practice was initially completely outlawed unless not doing it would result in a company collapsing. It is now proposed that there will be a distinction between ‘restricted’ and ‘non-restricted’ contract variations and only dismissal as a result of an employee’s refusal to accept ‘restricted changes’ (i.e. reduced pay, time off hours) will result in automatic dismissal liability.
Collective Redundancy Consultation- currently collective redundancy regime is triggered if an employer is proposing to dismiss as redundant 20 or more employees at one establishment within 90 days. The Bill originally proposed to abolish the ‘one establishment’ rule so that employers would have to aggregate numbers of affected employees across an entire organisation, rather than a single workplace. It is now proposed that the ‘one establishment’ test will remain but there will be a further threshold test which is yet to be determined.
NDAs- there is a proposal for there to be tighter controls on the use of NDAs for discrimination and harassment. The aim is to shift the balance of power to put workers in control of confidentiality, rather than having it imposed on them.
The ACAS Early Conciliation window will increase from six to twelve weeks from 1 December 2025.

December 2025 - Major U-Turn on Unfair Dismissal Protection

On 28 November 2025, Prime Minister Sir Kier Starmer announced a major U-turn scrapping proposals to make unfair dismissal protection a right from the first day of employment.

The Government had planned to make unfair dismissal protection a day 1 right, subject to a ‘light touch’ initial period of employment. This proposal had faced significant challenge in the House of Lords who had proposed scrapping the light touch regime in favour of simply reducing the qualifying period for unfair dismissal to 6 months. The Government had rejected this proposal twice but finally relented in order to help smooth the passage of the Employment Rights Bill.

On 5 December 2025, the Government published its latest amendments to the Employment Rights Bill and confirmed the proposal to reduce the qualifying period of service an employee needs to bring an unfair dismissal claim from 2 years to 6 months. It also proposed removing the cap on unfair dismissal compensation.

16 December 2025 - Employment Rights Bill is passed

The Bill has been passed by Parliament. Alongside passing the Bill, the Government committed to publishing an impact assessment on the impact of removing the unfair dismissal compensation cap before implementing the unfair dismissal sections of the new Act.

18 December 2025 - The Employment Rights Act 2025 receives Royal Assent

The Employment Rights Bill has received Royal Assent and is now the Employment Rights Act 2025.

The only substantive provision that comes into force immediately is the repeal of the provisions introduced by the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act 2023. Implementation of many of the Act’s provisions will be staggered over the upcoming months and years with much of the detail to be determined through further consultation.

February 2026 - New Measures

The following measures are due to take effect in February 2026:

Dismissal for taking part in industrial action will become ‘automatically unfair.’ This will remove the current 12-week limit for claiming unfair dismissal.
The time needed to give notice of industrial action will reduce to 10 days, instead of 14 days
Unions will need a simple majority to vote for industrial action
Picket supervisors will not longer be required
Industrial action mandates will last for 12 months, instead of 6 months
Industrial action and ballot notices will be simplified
Political fund rules will change

April 2026 - New Measures

The following measures are due to take effect in April 2026 -

Collective redundancy protective award to double to 180 days, rather than 90 days as currently
Day 1 paternity leave and unpaid parental leave
Enhanced whistleblower protections for making sexual harassment complaint
Establish Fair Work Agency
Removal of the 3 day waiting period and the lower earnings limit for SSP
Equality Action plans become voluntary
Simplifying trade union recognition process and enable electronic and workplace balloting for trade unions

October 2026 - New Measures

The following measures are due to take effect in October 2026 -

Fire and rehire - dismissing someone then rehiring them on worse terms and conditions will become an automatically unfair dismissal in most cases.
Requiring employers to take all reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment and introducing obligation to prevent third party harassment (on the grounds of any protected characteristic).
Establish the Fair Pay Agreement Adult Social Care Negotiating Body
Tightening tipping law - employers will need to consult with workers or their representatives before creating a tipping policy and update their tipping policy every 3 years.
Duty to inform workers of their right to join a trade union and strengthen trade union rights of access
New rights and protections for trade union reps
Extending protection against detriment for taking industrial action
Employment Tribunal time limits increased from 3 to 6 months
Public sector outsourcing ‘two-tier code’- there will be new measures for public sector outsourcing to avoid having different terms and conditions for ex-public sector employees and private sector employees.

December 2026 - New Measures

The following measures are due to take effect in December 2026 -

Commencement of the Mandatory Seafarers Charter (establishes legally binding standards for those employing seafaring staff)

2027 - New Measures

The following measures are not expected to take effect until 2027 -

Protection from unfair dismissal will become a right after 6 months of employment.
Equality Action plans become compulsory
Enhanced dismissal protection for pregnant women and new mothers
New power to enable regulations to specify steps that are to be regarded as reasonable to determine whether an employer has taken all reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment introduced.
Ending the use of “exploitative zero hour contracts” and applying zero hour contract measures to agency workers.
Flexible working (refusal of a request must be reasonable)
Bereavement leave ( day 1 right to 1 weeks leave)
Extension of blacklisting protection - extending laws that protect trade union members from discrimination and being blacklisted.
Regulation of umbrella companies
Collective redundancy consultation threshold - employers will need to consider the total number of redundancies across their whole organisation, not just individual workplaces