The Employment Rights Act 2025 will give trade unions a general right to enter workplaces to recruit, organise and represent members for the first time in Great Britain.
Workplace access rights are a key pillar of the government’s agenda to increase the size and power of the trade union movement. They potentially affect all but the very smallest employers, aiming to give unions a ‘foot in the door’ in businesses where they may have had little or no presence. Following a public consultation, the government has now published the regulations and Code of Practice implementing the access regime. This article provides an overview of what access rights will involve in practice and what employers can do to prepare before 30 October 2026 when the law changes.
The Employment Rights Act outlines a complex legal framework through which unions will be able to request access from employers and apply to the Central Arbitration Committee (CAC) to order access arrangements.
Employers will have 15 working days to respond to a union’s request for access, using a standard form included in the new Code.
If they don’t accept the request in full, employers will then have a further 25 working days to negotiate access terms with the union. If negotiations fail, the union will have a further 15 working days to apply to the CAC for a workplace access order (with potential for the CAC to extend this time limit by 15 days in certain circumstances).
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