Looking for more detail on how the Employment Rights Act could affect your organisation? Our Employment Rights Act tracker gives you a structured, up to date view of the reforms, with clear timelines, practical commentary and prompts to help you understand what is changing, when it matters, and what to do next.

Background

The Employment Rights Act 2025 continues to be implemented in stages following Royal Assent in December 2025. A series of commencement regulations made in March 2026 bring a number of important provisions into force across April 2026, alongside developments in the new enforcement framework.

Key developments

From April 2026, several notable changes take effect.

Statutory sick pay (SSP) has been reformed with effect from 6 April 2026. SSP will become payable from the first day of absence, removing the previous three-day waiting period. In addition, the lower earnings limit will be removed, extending SSP eligibility to lower-paid workers. For those employees, SSP will be calculated as the lower of the standard rate and 80% of normal weekly earnings.

A number of wider employment law reforms also come into force on 6 April 2026. These include expanding whistleblowing protection to cover disclosures relating to sexual harassment, increasing the maximum protective award for failures in collective redundancy consultation, introducing powers to require large employers to publish equality action plans on a voluntary basis from this year, and on a mandatory basis...

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