The Employment Rights Bill –Overview for Children’s Care Services

On 10 October 2024, the UK government published the Employment Rights Bill, introducing 28 significant reforms that will transform employment rights for employees and the legal obligations of care providers.
Alongside the Bill, the government released a ‘Next Steps to Make Work Pay’ paper, which outlined plans for future reform. Since publication, the Bill has undergone amendments, as it continues its journey through Parliament. In this blog we provide a brief overview of the key changes being introduced under the Bill.
Day-one rights
One of the most significant changes is the removal of the two-year qualifying period for unfair dismissal. This means that all employees will gain protection from unfair dismissal from day one. To balance this, a statutory probation period (likely to be nine months) will be introduced, which the Bill identifies as an “initial period of employment”, during which employers must follow a modified procedure before dismissing an employee.
New starters will immediately be entitled to family-related leave, including paternity leave, unpaid parental leave, and bereavement leave.
Statutory Sick Pay (SSP) will become available from the very first day of absence (rather than the fourth day), and the lower earnings limit of £123 a week will be removed, however a lower rate of SSP will be available for those on lower weekly earnings.
Zero-hour contracts
Workers on zero-hours or other atypical contracts will be entitled to be offered guaranteed hours after the end of a reference period (anticipated to be a 12-week reference period). Employers will also need to give reasonable notice for shifts and give compensation if changes or cancellations are made at the last minute. Zero-hour contract rights will also be extended to apply to agency workers.
Tackling harassment
The Bill proposes an amendment to the Equality Act to make employers be held liable for harassment by third parties (such as clients, visitors, suppliers) unless they can demonstrate that they have taken all reasonable steps to prevent it.
Employers have been subject to a new duty to take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace since 26th October 2024. The Bill takes this duty a step further by requiring employers to take ‘all’ reasonable steps. A failure to comply with this duty could result in an uplift by 25% in compensation awarded by an Employment Tribunal in a successful sexual harassment claim, as well as potential enforcement action by the European Human Rights Commission.
Trade union
The Bill signals a clear intention to strengthen the role of trade unions across workplaces. Key proposals include a requirement for employers to inform workers of their right to join a union, expanded workplace access for union representatives (both physical and virtual access), and lower thresholds for unions to gain formal statutory recognition. Employees taking part in strike action will also receive greater legal protection.
Flexible working
Employees already have the right to request flexible working, however the Bill proposes to create a right to flexible working. Any refusal of a flexible working request must be reasonable, and the eight business reasons for refusing will remain the same. An employer must explain in writing what the ground for any refusal is and why their refusal is considered reasonable.
Fire and re-hire
The Code of Practice on fire and rehire was put in place in July 2024. Whilst the practice remains lawful, it is increasingly high-risk from a reputational perspective. Whilst the Bill does not ban fire and rehire, it plans to restrict employers’ ability to use fire and rehire to change terms and conditions and aims to make any dismissal automatically unfair where the reason for dismissal is the employee not agreeing to their terms and conditions of employment being varied.
What Comes Next?
The Employment Rights Bill is still moving through Parliament, but most changes are expected to take effect in 2026, and some in 2027 following further consultation and the passage of secondary legislation. However, employers should start preparing now.
We will continue to unpack the Bill’s most significant reforms in our upcoming blogs, taking a deeper look at some of the more transformative areas, particularly around zero-hours contracts, unfair dismissal, and statutory sick pay.
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