October has been a busy month on the employment law front. The government has published further consultations and issued responses to a number of outstanding consultation exercises – the pace of employment law reform shows no sign of slowing!
To help you stay up to date with the latest developments, we provide a brief roundup below of the key announcements made this month. We have also updated our “ERA 2025 implementation roadmap” to reflect several important changes to the government’s reform timetable. Key dates to note are:
March 2027 – The new “fire and rehire” provisions are now scheduled to come into force in March 2027, and not January 2027 as previously indicated.
April 2027 – The new “organisation-wide” threshold for collective redundancy consultation will be introduced.
October 2027 – Enhanced dismissal protections for pregnant women and new mothers are expected to take effect.
Interestingly, the zero-hour reforms have disappeared from the implementation timetable altogether. The government’s latest timeline states that the timings of these changes “will be updated following the consultation process”, suggesting that the implementation date remains uncertain. Whether this is a product of the largely incoherent nature of the relevant provisions in the ERA 2025 is a matter for conjecture.
