Further to our last update in October 2025, on 18 December 2025, the Government confirmed the employment law changes coming into effect as of April 2026.
For the avoidance of doubt – we will communicate further changes coming into effect in 2026 and 2027 in due course.
Paternity Leave and Unpaid Parental Leave
- Paternity Leave – will become a “day-one right”. This means employees will be able to provide notice to take leave from the first day of their new employment, without the need to meet minimum service requirement.
- The restriction preventing employees from taking paternity leave following shared parental leave will be removed.
- Unpaid Parental Leave – currently, employees must have at least one year’s service to qualify for parental leave. From April 2026, this qualifying barrier will be removed, thus allowing eligible employees to take unpaid parental leave from day one of their employment.
Statutory Sick Pay (SSP)
From April 2026:
- The lower earnings threshold will be removed, meaning more employees will be eligible for SSP.
- The three “waiting days” rule will be removed, meaning SSP will be payable from the first day of sickness absence.
Sexual Harassment
From April 2026:
- Sexual harassment will become a “qualifying disclosure”.
- This means that employees making a qualifying disclosure will be protected from suffering a detriment or dismissal, and any dismissal under these circumstances will be considered automatically unfair.
Collective Consultation
- The maximum award will double, increasing from 90 days’ pay to 180 days’ gross pay.
Other changes coming into effect from October 2026:
- Fire and Re-hire – in most cases will become an automatically unfair dismissal.
- Harassment – Employers will be liable for harassment from third parties, unless they have taken all reasonable steps to prevent it happening. Employers will need to ensure that they take ‘all reasonable steps’ to prevent sexual harassment at the workplace – current the law mentions ‘reasonable steps’.
- Time limit for making an ET case will double, currently it is 3 months. From October 2026, this will increase to 6 months.
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