Employment Right Bill Series: Implementation Roadmap – a long and winding road

One certainty in life is that when you deliver employment legislation updates via written Insight and a webinar, the government will promptly publish more information! And so, on Tuesday afternoon 1 July 2025, the government published its roadmap for implementing the Employment Rights Bill (ERB) changes.  

We have summarised the timetable in the Details section below.  

Comment

There’s still a lot of hyperbole but some key messages in this document are: 

• The government is taking a staggered approach to further consultations and stakeholder engagement exercises, as well as the actual implementation of several of the most significant reforms. The government’s stated aim is to ensure that there is a proper business readiness period so that businesses and organisations fully understand the details of the reforms and can prepare long before they come into force;
• While the ERB sets out the policy framework clearly in primary legislation, key details of how many of the individual measures will work in practice will be consulted on, agreed and then set out in secondary legislation and regulations;
• The government is committed to ensuring that the enforcement landscape has the necessary capacity and capability to uphold the new requirements. This will include support for ACAS, the employment tribunal system and the new Fair Work Agency. 

Details 

Phased consultation to gather stakeholder view on the ERB’s numerous policy strands will take place as follows:

Summer/ Autumn 2025

• Giving employees protection from unfair dismissal from 'day 1', including on the dismissal process in the statutory probation period

Autumn 2025

• A package of trade union measures including electronic balloting and workplace balloting; simplifying trade union recognition processes; duty to inform workers of their right to join a trade union; and, right of access. New rights and protections for trade union representatives will be covered by an ACAS Code of Practice consultation.
• Fire and rehire
• Bereavement leave
• Rights for pregnant workers
• Ending the exploitative use of Zero Hours Contracts (ZHCs) 

Winter/early 2026

• A package of trade union measures including protection against detriments for taking industrial action and, blacklisting.
• Tightening tipping law
• Collective redundancy
• Flexible working reform 

The Government has indicated that some measures may require more than one round of consultation, especially if there is a need to update or develop a Code of Practice. It has also confirmed that commencement timings for when provisions will come into force will be informed by the insights gained from relevant consultation and engagement exercises. 

Phased implementation of measures will include the following: 

As is usual practice, measures will be introduced on common commencement dates in each year (6 April and 1 October) for the majority of regulations laid using the powers provided for in the ERB.

Measures that will take effect when the ERB receives Royal Assent or soon afterwards include: 

• Repeal of the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act 2023
• Repeal of the great majority of the Trade Union Act 2016 provisions (some provisions will be repealed via commencement order at a later date)
• Simplifying industrial action notices and industrial action ballot notices
• Protections against dismissal for taking industrial action 

Measures that will take effect in April 2026 include: 

• Collective redundancy protective award;  – doubling the maximum period of the protective award from 90 day’s pay to 180 day’s pay.
• 'Day 1' Paternity Leave and Unpaid Parental Leave
• Whistleblowing protections (including bringing complaints of sex-based harassment within the scope of whistleblowing protection)
• Establishment of Fair Work Agency body
• Statutory Sick Pay; removing the Lower Earnings Limit and the three- day waiting period before entitlement to SSP kicks in.
• Simplifying the trade union recognition process
• Electronic and workplace balloting 

Measures that will take effect in October 2026 include: 

• Restricting employers’ ability to fire and rehire
• Tightening tipping laws
• Duty to inform workers of their right to join a trade union
• Strengthening trade unions' right of access to members in the workplace
• Requiring employers to take “all reasonable steps” to prevent sexual harassment of their employees
• Introducing an obligation on employers not to permit the harassment of their employees by third parties in respect of all nine protected characteristics
• New rights and protections for trade union reps
• Extension of time limit to bring ET claims from 3 to 6 months
• Extending protections against detriments for taking industrial action 

Measures that will take effect in 2027 include: 

• Gender pay gap and menopause action plans (introduced on a voluntary basis in April 2026)
• Rights for pregnant workers
• Introducing a power enabling the Government to make further regulations specifying what steps are to specify steps that are “reasonable”, when determining whether an employer has taken all reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment
• Prohibition against blacklisting
• Amending the threshold for triggering collective redundancy consultation (amending the “at one establishment” part of the provisions)
• Reforming flexible working requests
• Introducing an expanded right to bereavement leave
• Ending the ‘exploitative use’ of Zero Hours Contracts and applying the proposed ERB measures on these to agency workers
• ‘Day 1’ right – protection from unfair dismissal 

We will keep you updated on the detail and potential impact of these proposals as the various consultation documents are published, and more information is provided by the Government.  

Update: Immediate next steps – House of Lords Report Stage dates published 

The house of Lords has scheduled four sittings for its Report Stage over the course of this month and they go right up to the final day before the House commences its summer recess on 24 July 2025. The dates are: Monday 14, Wednesday 16, Monday 21 and Wednesday 23 July 2025. After the recess the process will resume with a Third Reading, a date for which is not yet set.

Previous insights in our ERB Series

Employment Right Bill Series: House of Lords Stages completed (Principal Associate, Suzanne Nulty) 26 June 2025

Employment Rights Bill Series: The House of Lords Stages so far (Principal Associate, Suzanne Nulty) 6 June 2025

Employment Rights Bill Series: Employment Rights Bill moves from Commons to Lords (Principal Associate, Suzanne Nulty) 25 March 2025

Employment Rights Bill Series continued (Principal Associate, Suzanne Nulty) 7 March 2025

Employment Rights Bill Series: Zero Hours Contracts and Guaranteed Hours: A Zero-Sum policy? (Principal Associate, Louise Singh) 27 January 2025

Employment Rights Bill Series: Small but significant changes to the statutory sick pay system (Principal Associate, Ashley Powis) 13 December 2024

Employment Rights Bill Series: First set of proposed amendments: what it means and what to expect (Principal Associate, Suzanne Nulty) 6 December 2024

Employment Rights Bill Series: Further rules on fair tipping (Principal Associate, Ashley Powis) 3 December 2024

Employment Rights Bill Series: Dismissal and Re-engagement - Tying the Hands of employers? (Legal Director, Ross Hutchison) 22 November 2024

Employment Rights Bill Series: The Fair Work Agency (Principal Associate, Suzanne Nulty) 15 November 2024

Employment Rights Bill Series: The Pendulum Swings on Industrial Relation (Partner Andrew Forrest and Principal Associate, Louise Singh) 8 November 2024

Employment Rights Bill Series: Day 1 right to claim unfair dismissal (Principal Associate, Suzanne Nulty and Associate, Lauren Barchet) 25 October 2024

Employment Right Bill Series – Flexible Working “Further Flexion” (Principal Associate, Suzanne Nulty) 21 October 2024

The Employment Rights Bill Series: 2024 – What’s in, What’s out, and What’s next (Principal Associates, Louise Singh and Suzanne Nulty) 11 October 2024