The Employment Rights Bill 2025 continues to progress through the House of Commons Committee Stage, with the Public Bill Committee now preparing its report after reviewing written and oral evidence from various groups, including employers, professional bodies, charities, trade unions, and individuals.
Once the report is published, the Bill will proceed to its third and final reading in the Commons before moving to the House of Lords for further debate and amendments. While most reforms are expected to come into force in 2026, some legal experts suggest the Employment Rights Bill 2025 could become law as early as Spring/Summer 2025.
Key Employment Law Changes & Early Reforms
- Removing the three-day waiting period for Statutory Sick Pay (the other reform of replacing the lower earnings limit with a percentage will not be before 20026)
- Any refusal by an employer to a flexible working request must be ‘reasonable’ (i.e. not just meet one of the statutory decline reasons)
- Enhance the current duty on employers to prevent sexual harassment by requiring the employer to take ‘all reasonable steps’
- Employers to become liable for third party harassment
- Widen the scope of what is a public interest disclosure, to include the category of sexual harassment allegations
- Remove the ‘at one establishment’ test in collective redundancy consultation threshold
- Introduce a requirement for employers to consult with any recognised trade union about the allocation of tips and gratuities, policy reviews to take place no longer than 3 years from previous review and for feedback gathered to be published anonymously to all workers
- Dismissal for failing to agree a variation of contract to be unlawful
- The right to be given a statement of trade union rights
- The right to paid time off for trade union Equality Representatives
- Increase Employment Tribunal time limits from three to six months
- Reform the statutory union recognition procedure
- Repealing most of the measures in the Trade Union Act 2016
- Repeal the Workers (Predictable Terms and Conditions) Act 2023 (which although became an Act of law in 2024, has never been given a commencement date)
- Government enforcement of employment rights related to agency workers, sick pay, holiday pay, the NMW Gangmasters licencing and modern slavery
- Ship operators to notify the Secretary of State of collective redundancies affecting a ship’s crew.
How Employers Should Prepare
Employers should begin evaluating the potential impact of these reforms on their operations and take steps to prepare for the changes.
For those that are not coming into force until 2026 and beyond, we must await the outcomes of several key public consultations, the development of new regulations, and the creation or amendment of codes of practice, and we anticipate further clarification throughout 2025.
For those reforms that have the potential to come into force in 2025 should be prioritised, along with any significant 2026 reforms.
We therefore strongly recommend employers stay abreast of these developments to ensure a seamless transition and avoid potential compliance issues.
The latest version of the Employment Rights Bill can be accessed here.
Please join us in our forthcoming Virtual Employment Law Seminar, in which we will discuss the reforms in further detail, along with other legislative changes expected in 2025. You can register by clicking here.
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At HR Solutions, we’re here to support you through the upcoming employment law changes in 2025.
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