Employment Rights Act 2025: Full Reform Timeline Explained

Why April 2026 Is Not the Finish Line

Much of the commentary around the Employment Rights Act 2025 (ERA 2025) has focused on the first wave of reforms coming into force in April 2026. Day-one unfair dismissal rights, strengthened flexible working provisions, and changes to statutory sick pay have rightly dominated the headlines. But employers who treat April 2026 as the destination - rather than the starting gun - risk being caught seriously off guard.

The ERA 2025 is a wide-ranging piece of legislation, and the Government has been clear that implementation will be phased over several years. Secondary legislation, codes of practice and further commencement orders are still to follow. For UK SMEs, the message is simple: build a multi-year compliance horizon into your planning now. Not next year. Now.

The ERA 2025 represents the most significant overhaul of UK employment law in a generation. Employers who plan ahead will adapt far more smoothly than those who react wave by wave.

Quick Recap: What Happens in April 2026

Before looking further ahead, it's worth briefly recapping the first tranche of changes expected from April 2026:

• Day-one unfair dismissal rights: The two-year qualifying period for ordinary unfair dismissal protection is removed. Employees will have the right to claim unfair dismissal from their first day of employment, subject to a statutory probationary period framework that's yet to be fully confirmed.
• Statutory sick pay (SSP) reforms: The lower earnings limit qualifying threshold is removed, and the three waiting days before SSP becomes payable are abolished - meaning SSP will be payable from day one of sickness absence.
• Flexible working strengthened: Employers face a higher bar when refusing flexible working requests, with a reasonableness test replacing the current eight statutory reasons.
• Zero-hours contract reforms: Workers on zero-hours or low-guaranteed-hours contracts will gain a right to be offered a contract reflecting their regular hours after a qualifying reference period.
• Strengthened trade union access rights: Initial reforms to union access and recognition processes come into effect.

These are significant changes in their own right. But they are followed by further reforms that demand equal - if not greater - attention from HR and business leaders.

The Second Wave: Collective Redundancy Reform

One of the most consequential later-stage reforms under ERA 2025 concerns collective redundancy consultation. Under current rules, employers proposing to make 20 or more redundancies at one establishment within 90 days must notify the Secretary of State and begin collective consultation with appropriate employee representatives for a minimum of 30 days (or 45 days where 100 or more redundancies are proposed).

ERA 2025 introduces significant changes to this framework, though the precise commencement date is subject to secondary legislation. Key anticipated reforms include:

• Removal or modification of the "one establishment" threshold, meaning employers may need to aggregate redundancies across multiple sites or the whole business when calculating whether collective consultation is triggered.
• Strengthened rights for employee representatives during the consultation process.
• Increased protective awards for failures to collectively consult - Employment Tribunals already award up to 90 days' gross pay per affected employee, and ERA 2025 is expected to increase enforcement teeth further.

For multi-site SMEs, the removal of the single-establishment rule could be particularly disruptive. A business with, say, five locations making five redundancies at each would currently avoid collective consultation obligations entirely. Under the reformed framework, those 25 redundancies may well trigger the full collective process. Workforce planning, HR processes and management training will all need to be reviewed well in advance of the commencement date.

Fire and Rehire: A Statutory Crackdown

The practice of dismissing employees and re-engaging them on inferior terms - commonly known as "fire and rehire" - has long been controversial. Frustratingly for many employers who've used it as a last resort, ERA 2025 introduces statutory restrictions that go considerably further than the existing ACAS Code of Practice on Dismissal and Re-engagement (which came into force in July 2024).

While exact commencement dates remain subject to Government confirmation, the ERA 2025 provisions are expected to:

• Make it automatically unfair to dismiss an employee where the employer's reason is to re-engage them on worse contractual terms, except in narrowly defined circumstances of genuine financial distress.
• Remove the ability to rely on the "some other substantial reason" (SOSR) defence when dismissing and re-engaging, unless the employer can demonstrate the business faced genuine existential risk.
• Significantly raise the risk profile of fire-and-rehire exercises, making Employment Tribunal claims easier to bring and harder to defend.

Businesses that have historically used contract variation as a lever for restructuring will need to fundamentally rethink their approach. Genuine consultation, agreement through collective bargaining and careful legal advice will become even more essential going forward.

Trade Union and Collective Rights: Further Reforms Ahead

Beyond the initial April 2026 union access changes, ERA 2025 contains a broader programme of reforms to collective labour rights. These include:

• Simplified trade union recognition procedures: Reduced bureaucratic hurdles for unions seeking statutory recognition, including changes to the ballot thresholds under the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 framework.
• Electronic balloting for industrial action: A long-anticipated reform allowing unions to conduct strike ballots electronically, likely to increase participation and make it easier to meet ballot thresholds.
• Repeals from the Trade Union Act 2016: Several provisions of the 2016 Act - including the 50% turnout requirement and the 40% support threshold in important public services - are expected to be repealed, lowering the bar for lawful industrial action.
• Strengthened rights for union representatives: Enhanced facilities time and protections for shop stewards and union learning representatives.

For employers in unionised sectors - or those who may face future recognition campaigns - these changes materially shift the industrial relations landscape. It's worth noting that HR and management teams should be properly briefed well ahead of these provisions landing, and where appropriate, industrial relations strategies thoroughly reviewed.

Other Reforms Still in the Pipeline

The ERA 2025 also contains provisions in the following areas where commencement dates are yet to be confirmed:

• Right to switch off: A new right for workers to disconnect from work-related communications outside of contracted hours, supported by a statutory code of practice. This mirrors similar legislation introduced in Ireland and several EU member states, though the UK's approach focuses on a code-based model rather than hard legislative prohibition.
• Equality action plans: Large employers (currently anticipated to be those with 250 or more employees) will be required to publish and implement equality action plans covering areas such as the gender pay gap and support for menopausal employees.
• Bereavement leave extension: Broadening of the existing parental bereavement leave framework, with new entitlements for employees experiencing other forms of bereavement.
• Third-party harassment provisions: Employers will face a strengthened duty to protect workers from harassment by third parties (such as customers or clients), reversing the position following the repeal of the relevant provisions in the Equality Act 2010.

Building Your Multi-Year Compliance Plan

Given the scale and phasing of ERA 2025, reactive compliance simply isn't a viable strategy for UK SMEs. The following framework will help your business stay ahead:

1. Audit your current contracts and policies now. Understand where you stand on zero-hours arrangements, SSP policies, flexible working procedures, and redundancy processes before the first wave hits.
2. Map the reforms to your business model. Not every change will affect every business equally. A multi-site employer faces very different collective redundancy risks than a single-location SME. Identify your highest-exposure areas first.
3. Engage your HR and legal advisers early. Secondary legislation, codes of practice and ACAS guidance will continue to be published through 2025 and 2026. Build in regular review points with your advisers rather than waiting for commencement dates to creep up on you.
4. Train your managers. Many of these reforms - particularly around fire and rehire, flexible working, and trade union rights - require line managers to behave differently in day-to-day situations. Training is not a one-off event; it should be embedded in your management development programme.
5. Monitor Government consultations. Several aspects of ERA 2025 remain subject to consultation or secondary legislation. Stay engaged with updates from ACAS, the Department for Business and Trade and your sector trade bodies.

Key Takeaways

April 2026 is a milestone, not the finish line. The Employment Rights Act 2025 will reshape UK employment law across a multi-year horizon - and the businesses that thrive will be those that plan ahead rather than react.

The ERA 2025 represents a fundamental reset of the relationship between employers, workers and trade unions in the UK. For SMEs with limited in-house HR resource, the cumulative compliance burden is significant. However the businesses that approach this strategically - with early planning, clear prioritisation, and the right professional support - will find the reforms can be managed without operational disruption.

Watch this space: as commencement dates are confirmed and secondary legislation is published, we will update our guidance to keep you fully informed.