On this page · 11 sections
- Seven dates, one table
- What is law today and what is still a plan
- 1 January 2027: three changes, three different systems
- March and April 2027: contracts, action plans, leave and redundancy maths
- August to December 2027
- Data fields and workflows to add
- Payroll numbers for 2027/28
- Worked example: a 320-employee company on three sites
- Implementation checklist
- How eCorpIT can help
- References
Summary. The Employment Rights Act 2025 reaches HR and payroll systems in seven months of 2027, according to the Department for Business and Trade (DBT) timeline updated on 5 November 2026. On 1 January the unfair dismissal qualifying period falls from two years to six months, the compensatory award cap goes, employers must tell workers they can join a union, and tipping consultation rules start. March brings fire-and-rehire protections and mandatory gender equality action plans for public authorities. April extends those plans to private and voluntary employers with 250 or more employees and adds unpaid bereavement leave, a ban on AI-drafted blacklists and an organisation-wide collective redundancy threshold. August to December bring e-balloting, NDA limits, flexible working and pregnancy protections, and umbrella company regulation. Only the unfair dismissal change has commencement regulations so far: SI 2026/559, made on 26 May 2026. The rest are planning dates. For 2027/28, employer National Insurance stays at 15% above £96 a week and the Employment Allowance at £10,500, while the Lower Earnings Limit rises to £133 a week. The rules cover Great Britain, not Northern Ireland. This is not legal advice.
About this article. For HR, payroll and HRIS leads at UK employers and the teams that build their systems. On 12 November 2026 we checked every date, section number and rate against the Act and its commencement regulations, DBT's timeline, Acas guidance, HMRC rate tables and DWP publications. This is general information, not legal advice, and DBT says its future dates may still move, so confirm with your advisers before changing production systems. Researched with AI assistance and reviewed by our editorial team.
Seven dates, one table
The table sorts the 2027 duties by the systems they touch, using DBT's timeline, the Acas summary of the Act (updated 12 November 2026) and the commencement regulations. Our companion piece on what the six-month rule means for hiring UK developers covers the hiring decision, and our 2027 US and UK compliance calendar sets these dates beside other deadlines.
| Date | Measure | Legal footing on 12 Nov 2026 | Systems touched |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 Jan 2027 | Unfair dismissal qualifying period cut to six months; compensatory award cap removed | Commenced by SI 2026/559 where the effective date of termination is on or after 1 Jan 2027 | Service dates, offboarding, settlement codes in payroll |
| 1 Jan 2027 | Written statement of the right to join a trade union | DBT and Acas date; no commencing regulations seen | Onboarding pack, delivery evidence |
| 1 Jan 2027 | Tipping policy consultation and three-year review | DBT and Acas date; no commencing regulations seen | Policy register, tips and tronc runs |
| Mar 2027 | Fire-and-rehire protections; action plans for public authorities | DBT planned month | Contract variation workflow, workforce planning |
| Apr 2027 | Action plans for private and voluntary employers (250+ employees), bereavement leave, AI-drafted blacklist ban, organisation-wide redundancy threshold | DBT planned month | Pay gap pipeline, absence types, recruitment tools, redundancy tracker |
| Aug 2027 | E-balloting for recognition and derecognition | DBT planned month | Worker lists by bargaining unit |
| Sep 2027 | NDA regulations for harassment and discrimination | DBT planned month | Contract and settlement templates |
| Oct 2027 | Flexible working reasonableness test; pregnancy and new mother protections | DBT planned month | Request workflow, protected-period flags |
| Dec 2027 | Umbrella companies regulated as employment businesses | DBT planned month | Contingent-worker records |
What is law today and what is still a plan
The latest commencement regulations we could read are the Employment Rights Act 2025 (Commencement No. 6 and Transitional and Saving Provisions) Regulations 2026 (SI 2026/1065), made on 1 October 2026. Their note of earlier commencements gives a 2027 date to only section 25 and Schedule 3, both switched on for 1 January 2027 by SI 2026/559. Section 25 is the unfair dismissal change.
The union statement and tipping changes, listed by DBT and Acas for the same day, had no commencing regulations that we could find; legislation.gov.uk showed section 58 (the union statement) in force only for making regulations. Plan to the dates, but put anything awkward to roll back behind a feature flag. DBT says future dates depend on Parliament and may change.
Several 2026 changes are already live and need a regression test first:
- Statutory Sick Pay has been payable from the first day of sickness, with no Lower Earnings Limit test, since 6 April 2026. The 2026/27 rate is £123.25 a week or 80% of average weekly earnings, whichever is lower.
- Since 6 April 2026, regulation 16B of the Working Time Regulations requires records adequate to show compliance with annual leave and holiday pay rules, kept for six years; failing to keep them is an offence under regulation 29.
- The Fair Work Agency was set up on 7 April 2026 and takes on enforcement of rights such as holiday pay and SSP.
- The tribunal time limit rose from three to six months on 1 October 2026 (9 November 2026 for breach of contract claims in Scotland), so retention rules and legal holds must cover a longer window.
- The maximum protective award for failing to consult on collective redundancies doubled to 180 days' pay on 6 April 2026.
- For pay from 6 April 2026, the agency, or the end client where there is no agency, must make sure an umbrella company operates PAYE correctly, and HMRC can recover any shortfall from them.
The Act's employment provisions extend to England, Wales and Scotland. Northern Ireland has its own employment law, so a UK-wide HRMS needs a jurisdiction flag on each rule.
1 January 2027: three changes, three different systems
Unfair dismissal at six months: service dates and settlements
Section 25 substitutes six months for two years in section 108 of the Employment Rights Act 1996, repeals section 124 (the cap on the compensatory award) and removes the minister's power to change the qualifying period by regulations. SI 2026/559 applies the change wherever the effective date of termination (EDT) falls on or after 1 January 2027, even if the dismissal happened earlier.
Service-date logic. The field that matters is the start of continuous employment, which is not always the HRMS hire date: TUPE transfers and some re-hires carry continuity. Store it separately, compute a qualifying date at six months, and show it in HR case tools.
The EDT calculator. Under section 97(2) of the 1996 Act, where an employer ends employment without the statutory minimum notice, the EDT for the qualifying period moves to the date that notice would have expired. Section 86 sets that minimum at one week for anyone with at least one month's and under two years' service. A tool that uses only the payroll leaving date will mark some people as not yet qualified when the statute says they are.
Settlements in payroll. HMRC charges Class 1A National Insurance at 15% on termination awards above £30,000, reported and paid during the tax year through payroll. Uncapped awards make this matter more: payroll needs a termination payment code that separates the £30,000 threshold from the excess, with notice pay kept apart because post-employment notice pay has its own tax rules.
Statement of trade union rights: an onboarding artefact
Section 58 inserts section 136A into the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992. Every worker, not only employees, must get a written statement that they may join a trade union, given with the section 1 statement of employment particulars (or its first instalment) and at any other times regulations prescribe. A failure falls under section 38 of the Employment Act 2002, which lets a tribunal add an award when it upholds certain other claims. Acas says the government will supply a standard statement.
For the HRMS this means a versioned template in the onboarding pack, an issued-at timestamp and template version per worker, delivery evidence, and a scheduler for any re-issue points the regulations set. Contractor and agency records held elsewhere need the same coverage where those people are legally workers.
Tipping: a policy register with a three-year clock
From 1 January 2027, Acas says employers must consult a recognised union, worker representatives or the workers themselves before creating or reviewing a tipping policy, share an anonymised summary of the feedback, and update the policy at least every three years. Systems need a policy register with a review-due date, a consultation log, an anonymised feedback export, and a link from each tips or tronc run to the policy version in force.
March and April 2027: contracts, action plans, leave and redundancy maths
Fire and rehire (March 2027)
Section 28 inserts sections 104I to 104K into the 1996 Act. Section 104I makes a dismissal automatically unfair where the reason is that the employee would not agree to a restricted variation, or where the aim is to re-engage them or hire someone else on a varied contract for substantially the same duties. Restricted variations include pay cuts, changes to pension terms, hours, certain shifts or time off, and clauses allowing such changes without agreement. Section 104K makes it automatically unfair to dismiss someone to replace them with a non-employee doing substantially the same work, unless the need for that work has fallen. Both have a narrow defence for financial difficulties that threaten the business as a going concern, and neither needs a qualifying period.
For systems, tag every contract change request with a variation category from the statutory list, and keep consultation records and anything offered in return, which a tribunal must weigh when the financial-difficulty defence is argued. Add a check that flags when a leaver's role is backfilled through an agency, contractor or outsourcing contract.
Gender equality and menopause action plans (March and April 2027)
Section 33 adds section 78A to the Equality Act 2010. Regulations can require employers with 250 or more employees to publish an equality action plan covering matters that expressly include the gender pay gap and menopause support. They can require senior approval but cannot require publication more often than every 12 months after the first plan. DBT puts public authorities on March 2027 and private and voluntary employers on April 2027, in line with their pay gap reporting cycles.
Extend the gender pay gap pipeline rather than build a parallel one, adding an approval step, a named approver and a publication record. Groups with EU staff have a separate job, covered in our EU pay transparency HRMS checklist.
Bereavement leave, including pregnancy loss (April 2027)
Section 18 widens parental bereavement leave into bereavement leave, including pregnancy loss, with at least one week's leave where the person who died is not a child. Acas says it will be unpaid. Add an absence type with its own unpaid-leave payroll code. Pregnancy loss is health information, so restrict who can see the reason and keep it out of standard absence reports.
AI-drafted blacklists (April 2027)
DBT lists an extension of blacklisting protections that bans blacklists drafted using AI and blacklisting by third parties. HR systems rarely hold an explicit blacklist, but recruitment tools can build exclusion lists from screening scores, past applications or bought-in data. Audit screening and scoring features, document where any exclusion list comes from, and check vendor contracts for third-party data. Our piece on EU AI Act high-risk rules for hiring tools covers the overlapping EU duties.
Collective redundancy: count the whole organisation (April 2027)
Section 29 changes the trigger for collective consultation to proposed redundancies, within 90 days or less, of either 20 or more employees at one establishment or a threshold number across the organisation. Regulations will set that number, which cannot be lower than 20. Notice to the Secretary of State (form HR1) must go in before any dismissal notice is given and at least 30 days before the first dismissal takes effect, or 45 days where 100 or more are proposed.
The government consulted from 26 February to 21 May 2026 on a single fixed number between 250 and 1,000 redundancies, or tiers based on employer size; on 12 November 2026 GOV.UK still showed the feedback as under analysis. Build one organisation-wide register with a rolling 90-day count, a per-establishment count and HR1 deadlines, and make the threshold a configuration value.
August to December 2027
- August: e-balloting. Workers will be able to vote electronically in recognition and derecognition ballots. Keep job and location data clean, because recognition cases depend on worker lists by bargaining unit.
- September: NDAs. Acas says clauses that would stop workers alleging or disclosing work-related harassment or discrimination will be void. Tag confidentiality clauses in templates and settlement agreements so legal can replace them in one pass.
- October: flexible working. Section 9 lets an employer refuse a request only on one or more of eight listed business grounds (or others set by regulations) and only where refusal is reasonable, and the refusal must give the grounds and explain why. Acas is consulting until 17 December 2026 on a revised code, expected in autumn 2027, and the government will set mandatory consultation steps in regulations. Build a mandatory ground picklist, a required reasonableness explanation and a meeting record.
- October: pregnancy and new mothers. Stronger protection against dismissal for pregnant workers and those returning from maternity leave. Make pregnancy notification and return dates structured fields, not free text.
- December: umbrella companies. Section 36 widens the definition of an employment business in the Employment Agencies Act 1973 so it catches umbrella companies. With the April 2026 PAYE rule, end clients need a contingent-worker record of the supply chain: agency, umbrella company and evidence that PAYE was checked.
Data fields and workflows to add
| Field or object | Where it lives | Driven by | Needed from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Continuous service start (separate from hire date) | Employee master | ERA 1996 s.108 | 1 Jan 2027 |
| Unfair dismissal qualifying date (computed) | Employee master, case tools | Start plus six months | 1 Jan 2027 |
| Statutory notice extension on EDT | Offboarding | ERA 1996 s.97(2) and s.86 | 1 Jan 2027 |
| Termination payment type and split | Payroll | Class 1A above £30,000 | Now |
| Union statement version and issued-at | Onboarding | TULRCA s.136A | 1 Jan 2027 |
| Tipping policy version and review-due date | Policy register | Three-year review | 1 Jan 2027 |
| Variation category on contract changes | Contract change workflow | ERA 1996 s.104I | Mar 2027 |
| Backfill-by-non-employee flag | Workforce planning | ERA 1996 s.104K | Mar 2027 |
| Action plan status and approver | Reporting | Equality Act 2010 s.78A | Mar or Apr 2027 |
| Bereavement absence type with restricted reason | Absence and payroll | ERA 2025 s.18 | Apr 2027 |
| Proposed redundancies, rolling 90 days, organisation-wide | Redundancy tracker | TULRCA s.188(A1) | Apr 2027 |
| Flexible working refusal ground and explanation | Request workflow | ERA 2025 s.9 | Oct 2027 |
| Supply-chain role (agency, umbrella) | Contingent-worker record | PAYE rules, ERA 2025 s.36 | Now, then Dec 2027 |
| Holiday records retained six years | Time, absence and payroll | WTR reg. 16B | Since 6 Apr 2026 |
| Jurisdiction (Great Britain or Northern Ireland) | Employee master | Extent of each Act | Now |
Payroll numbers for 2027/28
The Budget 2026 Annex A, published by HMRC on 28 October 2026, sets the 2027/28 National Insurance figures, and most are frozen. The 2026/27 column comes from HMRC and GOV.UK. DWP has proposed a 2027/28 Statutory Sick Pay rate and kept the auto-enrolment band and the £10,000 earnings trigger unchanged.
| Item | 2026/27 | 2027/28 | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Employer (secondary) Class 1 rate | 15% | 15% | Budget 2026 Annex A |
| Secondary Threshold | £96 a week (£5,000 a year) | £96 a week | Annex A; HMRC |
| Lower Earnings Limit | £129 a week | £133 a week | Annex A |
| Primary Threshold and Upper Earnings Limit | £242 and £967 a week | £242 and £967 a week | Annex A |
| Employment Allowance | £10,500 | £10,500 | Annex A |
| Statutory Sick Pay standard rate | £123.25 or 80% of AWE if lower, from day one | £127.55 proposed | HMRC; DWP |
| Class 1A on termination awards above £30,000 | 15% | HMRC 2027/28 table not yet out | HMRC |
| Automatic enrolment qualifying earnings band | £6,240 to £50,270 | £6,240 to £50,270 | GOV.UK; DWP review |
Worked example: a 320-employee company on three sites
Take a hypothetical software and services business in Great Britain with 320 employees: 180 in London, 95 in Manchester and 45 in Glasgow, paid monthly.
- Qualifying dates. An engineer who started on 10 July 2026 is dismissed without notice on 3 January 2027, short of six months on the payroll leaving date. Section 97(2) adds one week of statutory notice, so the EDT for the qualifying period is 10 January 2027, by which point the engineer has six months' service. The HRMS should show the engineer as qualified.
- Settlement. A negotiated exit of £42,000 for a senior manager, all of it a termination award, carries Class 1A on the £12,000 above £30,000: £12,000 x 15% = £1,800 of employer cost, reported through payroll in the same tax year.
- Action plans. With 320 employees the business is over the 250 line, so it should expect to publish a plan from April 2027, using its pay gap snapshot unless the regulations say otherwise.
- Redundancy. Cutting 14 roles in London and 9 in Manchester within 60 days gives 23 dismissals (14 + 9), with no site at 20, so no collective consultation duty arises today. A threshold anywhere in the 250 to 1,000 range consulted on would not change that; only a low tier for smaller employers could. The register should still count them, because a second proposal inside the same 90 days adds to the total.
Implementation checklist
- Before 1 January 2027. Backfill continuous service start dates, add the computed qualifying date, fix the EDT logic, add termination payment codes, and set up the tipping policy register if you handle tips.
- When the standard union statement is published. Load it as a versioned template, attach it to section 1 statements, and log issue evidence for every worker.
- By end of February 2027. Ship the variation categories and backfill flag; rehearse a variation proposal with HR and legal.
- By April 2027. Extend the pay gap pipeline for action plans, add the bereavement absence type, stand up the redundancy register, and audit screening tools for AI-built exclusion lists.
- By September 2027. Tag NDA clauses; build the flexible working refusal step against the final regulations and Acas code.
- By December 2027. Complete contingent-worker records for every agency and umbrella supply chain.
- Throughout. Run each change as a parallel payroll or workflow cycle before cutover.
How eCorpIT can help
eCorpIT is a Gurugram-based technology organisation, founded in 2021, assessed at CMMI Level 5 and MSME certified, with senior-led engineering teams working across AWS, Microsoft and Google platforms. Our HR tech and HRMS team builds service-date and EDT logic, versioned onboarding documents, contract-variation and redundancy registers and contingent-worker records, each run in parallel before go-live, while your legal advisers own the interpretation. Talk to us at /contact-us/.
Last updated: 12 November 2026.
