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Employment Rights Act 2025

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The Employment Rights Act 2025, part of the Labour government’s pledge to “Make Work Pay”, represents the biggest overhaul of employment rights in decades. The legislation received Royal Assent towards the end of December 2025, meaning it is now “law”.

Between 2026 and 2027, any company who has employees, uses temporary workers, or supplies temporary workers, will be affected by at least some of these changes. Here is an overview of the changes with an emphasis on employers. Here is an overview of the changes with an emphasis on recruitment agencies supplying temporary workers to end clients.

Umbrella company non-compliance

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The government has released draft legislation to introduce joint and several liability for agencies & consultancies using non-compliant umbrella companies. These changes come into effect on 6th April 2026.

If you use any umbrella companies, PEOs, EoRs or similar, these changes will affect you. My thoughts on the draft legislation and next steps are here.

Employment Rights Bill – Implementation timeline

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The government has released a timeline for expected “go-live” dates for many of the measures in the Employment Rights Bill, which is in the final stages of the parliamentary process. To save you having to trawl through yourselves, I’ve drafted a briefing document here.

Thankfully, two of the most impactful changes – the introduction of unfair dismissal rights from Day 1 of employment, and changes to zero hour contracts – aren’t likely to be introduced until 2027. But there are still alot of new measures going live between now and then.

The government will also release quite a few consultations during the rest of 2025 (details towards the end of the briefing document) so get involved if you can and give your feedback!

Autumn Statement 2024

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Less than a month after a raft of new measures were announced in the Employment Rights Bill, the government has announced significant changes to tax-related legislation in the Autumn Statement. Here is an update on (amongst other things) the new Employer’s NI rates and thresholds (from April 2025) as well as confirmation of the new measures to make agencies liable for umbrella company non-compliance (from 2026 onwards).

Employment Law Update

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EDIT (October 2024): the new Employment Rights Bill published in October 2024 will (once the Bill becomes an Act) repeal the The Workers (Predictable Terms and Conditions) Act. Therefore the notes included in this update in relation to The Workers (Predictable Terms and Conditions) Act should be ignored.

There are a number employment law-related changes in the pipeline – some affect employees and temporary workers, some only affect temporary workers. I’ve put together an update on the changes, focusing on those which are most likely to affect my clients’ businesses.

The update is here – happy reading!

Umbrella company non-compliance

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The government has opened a public consultation into how best to address and combat non-compliance within the umbrella company industry. Here’s a quick overview of some of the consultation proposals. The consultation ended on 29th August and the government is currently analysing feedback.

Click here to download the overview.