The schemes that change what your payslip looks like

Finance Act 2004, Part 3, Chapter 3, and the CIS Regulations 2005 (S.I. 2005/2045)

Construction Industry Scheme (CIS)

In force 6 April 2021 and 6 April 2024 changes. Names 19 occupations. 16 dated primary sources.

• Bricklayer
• Carpenter
• Construction Worker
• Dryliner
• Electrician
• Flooring Installer
• Glazier
• Groundworker
• and 11 more

The Construction Industry Scheme is how HM Revenue and Customs collects tax from self employed construction work in the UK. When a contractor pays you for construction operations, the contractor takes money off your payment before you get it and sends that money to HMRC. The rate is 20% if you are registered for the scheme and the contractor can verify you, 30% if either of those is missing, and nothing at all if you hold gross payment status. The deduction is not taken from the whole invoice. The contractor first takes out any VAT you charged, then takes off what you actually paid for materials, consumable stores, fuel used other than for travelling, plant hired for the job and the cost of manufacturing or prefabricating materials, and applies the percentage to what is left. Travel and subsistence paid to you stay inside the figure the deduction is worked out on. You do not get a payslip. You get a CIS payment and deduction statement, which the contractor must give you within 14 days of the end of each tax month. The money taken is an advance payment towards your Income Tax and National Insurance and not a final tax: a sole trader or partner claims it back on the Self Assessment return, and a limited company sets it against its own PAYE and National Insurance bill through an Employer Payment Summary. The scheme sits in Part 3, Chapter 3 of the Finance Act 2004, sections 57 to 77, with the conditions for gross payment status in Schedule 11 and the penalty regime in Schedule 12. Three dated changes matter to what is described here. The deemed contractor and cost of materials rules took their current form on 6 April 2021. VAT compliance was added to the gross payment status test on 6 April 2024. And from 6 April 2026, CIS 340 records that the obligation to file a nil return is reinstated for mainstream contractors, so a contractor who paid no subcontractor in a tax month must file a nil return or notify HMRC of a period of inactivity. That last one is a duty on whoever pays you rather than on you, but it is why a contractor who has gone quiet may still be filing. Registering for CIS does not decide whether you are self employed. The scheme cannot apply to a contract of employment, and employment status is settled under common law on the terms of the particular engagement.

Employment (Allocation of Tips) Act 2023, Part 2B of the Employment Rights Act 1996

Tips, gratuities, service charges and troncs

In force 1 October 2024. Names 12 occupations. 16 dated primary sources.

• Bar Staff
• Barista
• Chef
• Commis Chef
• Head Chef
• Hotel Manager
• Hotel Receptionist
• Housekeeper
• and 4 more

If customers tip where you work, two separate sets of rules decide what reaches you. The Employment (Allocation of Tips) Act 2023 decides who gets the money. Since 1 October 2024 your employer must allocate every qualifying tip, gratuity and service charge fairly between the workers at your place of business, and pass it on no later than the end of the month after the customer paid it. Your employer must also hold a written tipping policy and keep a record for three years that you can ask to see. HMRC decides what comes off it. A tip is taxable whoever hands it over, so PAYE applies to anything paid to you by your employer or by a tronc. National Insurance works differently. Paragraph 5 of Part 10 of Schedule 3 to the Social Security (Contributions) Regulations 2001 disregards a payment of, or in respect of, a gratuity or offering where two things are both true. First, either the payment is not made directly or indirectly by the employer and does not represent money already paid to the employer, or the employer does not allocate the payment, directly or indirectly, to you. Second, the payment is not one caught by sub-paragraph (4) or (5): a payment from someone connected with the employer, unless it is made in recognition of personal services at a normal amount or is made by a troncmaster, and a payment made by a trustee holding property for a class of people including you, where that trustee is not a troncmaster. Card tips land in the employer's bank account first, so in most restaurants and bars the first limb of the first condition fails and everything turns on the second. An independent troncmaster has to decide who gets what, with no steer from the employer. Where that holds, your tronc line carries income tax and no Class 1 National Insurance at all. Where the employer picks the split, imposes the points system, or puts a mandatory service charge through the tronc, Class 1 National Insurance is due on the whole amount and the employer is the one liable for it.

The Local Government Pension Scheme Regulations 2013 (S.I. 2013/2356)

Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS)

In force 1 April 2026 for the contribution bands, with career average build-up since 1 April 2014. Names 17 occupations. 22 dated primary sources.

• Benefits Assessor
• Building Control Officer
• Care Worker
• Cleaner
• Conservation Officer
• Coroner's Officer
• Ecologist
• Electoral Services Officer
• and 9 more

The Local Government Pension Scheme is the pension most council staff are in, and it behaves differently from the other big public service schemes in a way you can see on the payslip. Your contribution percentage is set on your ACTUAL pensionable pay in that job, not on the full-time rate for your grade. Two people on the same grade doing the same work pay different percentages if one of them is part time. In England and Wales there are nine bands from 1 April 2026, running from 5.5% on pay up to £18,400 to 12.5% on £210,701 or more, and your employer picks your band from the pay you are on in the pay period that contains 1 April. If you hold two jobs with the same council you get a rate for each one separately. The bands move every April, so your percentage can change with no change in your pay at all. There is also a 50/50 section, which no other major public service scheme has: you elect in writing to pay half your normal contribution and build up half the normal pension, 1/98th of your pay for that year instead of 1/49th, while your death in service cover and your ill health cover stay at the full rate. The election runs until you cancel it or until your employer's automatic re-enrolment date, which comes round about every three years and puts you back in the main section from the start of the next pay period whether or not you noticed. The pension you build up is career average, not final salary: 1/49th of the pensionable pay you actually received each year goes into a pension account, and the balance is revalued each April, by 3.8% on 6 April 2026. Pensionable pay is wide. It is all your salary, wages, fees and other payments, and the scheme's own glossary lists overtime, both contractual and non-contractual, which was not pensionable before the career average scheme began on 1 April 2014. Travel and subsistence allowances, pay in lieu of notice and a car allowance are not pensionable. The contribution is a net pay arrangement: it comes out of your pay before income tax is worked out, so your taxable pay is lower, but HMRC is explicit that National Insurance is assessed on gross earnings before any pension contribution and there is no equivalent NI relief. Scotland and Northern Ireland run separate schemes with their own tables and their own number of bands.

Income Tax (Earnings and Pensions) Act 2003, section 367 (fixed sum deductions for repairing and maintaining work equipment), sitting inside the general rule at section 336, with the agreed amounts published at EIM32712

Flat rate expenses for uniforms, work clothing and tools

In force for the tax years 2008 to 2009 onwards, the span the published table of amounts gives itself. Names 24 occupations. 27 dated primary sources.

• Bus Driver
• Cabin Crew
• Cleaner
• CNC Machinist
• Dental Nurse
• Firefighter
• Neonatal Nurse
• Nurse
• and 16 more

A flat rate expense is a fixed annual amount HM Revenue and Customs has agreed for your trade, to cover what you spend keeping your own tools and specialist clothing in repair. It is not a rule of thumb. HMRC publishes a table at EIM32712 that names industries and the occupations inside them and gives each one a figure: £140 for a joiner or carpenter in the building industry, £125 for a nurse, £185 for ambulance staff on active service, £120 for a pipe fitter, £80 for a uniformed fire fighter, £1,022 for a uniformed commercial pilot. If your industry and job are not in the table you can claim £60. The amount is a deduction from your taxable pay, not a payment, so what you get back is the tax on it: £60 claimed by a basic rate taxpayer is worth £12 a year. Nothing about this appears on your payslip as a line of its own. For the current tax year HMRC puts the allowance into your tax code, which raises the number in it and quietly reduces the Income Tax figure on every payslip that follows. For past years you claim separately and HMRC either changes your code or repays you. You can go back to the current tax year and the four before it. Two conditions do the most work: the deduction exists only where you have to bear the cost yourself, and section 367(3) removes it entirely if your employer pays or reimburses that cost, or would do so if you asked.

Chapter 11 of Part 2 of the Income Tax (Earnings and Pensions) Act 2003

Umbrella company and agency payslips

In force 6 April 2026 for the Chapter 11 rules. Names 3 occupations. 23 dated primary sources.

• Broadcast Engineer
• CAD Technician
• Sound Engineer

If you work through an umbrella company, the umbrella is your legal employer and the rate you were quoted is almost certainly not your wage. That figure is the assignment rate, and it is what the agency pays the umbrella for your hours. Out of it the umbrella funds employer National Insurance at 15%, the Apprenticeship Levy where its pay bill is large enough, its own margin and any employer pension contribution. What is left is your gross pay, which includes your holiday pay, and only at that point do income tax and employee National Insurance come off. HMRC's own worked example shows a £25 assignment rate producing a basic rate of pay of £18.89 an hour, with £84.16 of holiday pay on top of it inside a gross figure of £783.09. Those employer costs are real and lawful, but they are costs a directly employed person never sees on a payslip, because their employer pays them out of its own money rather than out of the money the payslip is about. From 6 April 2026, under Chapter 11 of Part 2 of the Income Tax (Earnings and Pensions) Act 2003, a relevant party is jointly and severally liable with the umbrella for PAYE the umbrella should have paid and did not. That is usually the agency that supplies you, but section 61Z(2)(b) makes the end client a relevant party where the agency is connected with the umbrella or is non-UK resident, and section 61Z(3) reaches the closest UK-resident person in the chain where both the client and the agency are offshore. The umbrella still runs the payroll and still issues your payslip. The document that lets you check all of this before you agree to anything is the Key Information Document, which the agency must give you before you agree terms.

The Agency Workers Regulations 2010 (S.I. 2010/93)

Agency workers and the twelve week qualifying period

In force 1 October 2011, with pay between assignments contracts abolished on 6 April 2020 and the tribunal time limit extended on 1 October 2026. Names 13 occupations. 23 dated primary sources.

• Baggage Handler
• CNC Machinist
• Court Usher (HMCTS)
• Exam Invigilator
• Forklift Operator
• Metal Fabricator
• Production Operative
• Security Guard
• and 5 more

Work in the same role for the same hirer for twelve continuous calendar weeks through a temporary work agency and regulation 5 of the Agency Workers Regulations 2010 entitles you to the same basic working and employment conditions as if that hirer had recruited you directly. A week counts however few hours you worked in it, so twelve weeks can be twelve single shifts. The comparison is narrower than most summaries suggest and it is worth knowing exactly how narrow. Regulation 6(1) closes the list to six headings: pay, the duration of working time, night work, rest periods, rest breaks and annual leave. Pay is wide inside that list, covering basic pay, overtime, shift and unsocial hours allowances, holiday pay, commission and any bonus tied to the amount or quality of your own work. Regulation 6(3) then takes eleven things back out, and the three that surprise people most are an occupational pension, occupational sick pay above statutory sick pay, and redundancy pay. The comparator is not the person at the next desk. Regulation 5(1) asks what you would have been entitled to for doing the same job had the hirer recruited you directly at the time the qualifying period commenced, including any pay rise the hirer's own staff have had since; a real comparable employee matters only under regulation 5(3), which deems the duty met where you are already on that person's terms. Two rights do not wait twelve weeks: regulation 12 gives you access to the hirer's collective facilities and amenities from day one, and regulation 13 gives you the hirer's vacancies. The clock runs on the role and the hirer, not on who pays you, so changing agency or umbrella part way through does not restart it. Your payslip still comes from the agency or the umbrella and keeps its usual shape. What should change is the rate on it.

Income Tax (Earnings and Pensions) Act 2003, sections 343 and 344, with HMRC's List 3

Registration fees and professional subscriptions

In force 6 April 2003; List 3 as at 7 September 2026. Names 24 occupations. 24 dated primary sources.

• Accountant
• Actuary
• Architect
• Bookkeeper
• Building Surveyor
• Chartered Legal Executive
• Chiropractor
• Conveyancer
• and 16 more

A professional fee reaches your payslip in three ways, and each one is taxed differently. If you pay it yourself out of money that has already been taxed, nothing on the payslip changes and you claim the relief separately, at your own tax rate, for the current tax year and the 4 previous ones. If your employer takes it out of your net pay and sends it to the regulator for you, that is a convenience and not a tax break: the deduction sits below tax and National Insurance, the relief is still yours to claim, and most people never claim it. If your employer pays the body direct or pays you back, there is nothing to report at all where that body is on HMRC's List 3, and where it is not on List 3 the cost is added to your earnings for Class 1 National Insurance. Section 343 of ITEPA 2003 gives relief on a fee you must pay to practise at all, but only for the registers named in a closed Table in the Act. Section 344 gives relief on a subscription to a body HMRC has approved. A fee in neither route gets nothing, whoever pays it and however compulsory it feels.

National Minimum Wage Regulations 2015 and the devolved agricultural wages orders

Agricultural wages orders and the accommodation offset

In force 1 April 2026 for the rates and offset. Names 10 occupations. 32 dated primary sources.

• Agricultural Engineer
• Farm Worker
• Farmer
• Forester
• Gamekeeper
• Horticulturist
• Hotel Receptionist
• Housekeeper
• and 2 more

Two separate rules decide the legal minimum on a land worker's payslip, and the first of them depends on which country you work in. England abolished the Agricultural Wages Board for England and Wales under section 72 of the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013, so an agricultural worker taken on in England is on the National Minimum Wage and nothing above it. For someone employed there before 1 October 2013, gov.uk gives two answers and they do not match: its overview page says those workers still have the terms and conditions set out in the Agricultural Wages (England and Wales) Order 2012, while its pay and overtime page says they still have the right to the Agricultural Minimum Wage if it says so in their contract. No statutory instrument writing the preservation down was found, so on the narrower reading the contract is what decides it, and the place to look is your own written statement of employment particulars. Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland each still make an order of their own with published grades. The Agricultural Wages (Wales) Order 2025 sets Grade C at £13.48 an hour, Grade D at £14.79 and Grade E at £16.23, all above the £12.71 National Living Wage, and because that order has run unchanged since 1 April 2025 its lower grades have been overtaken and those workers are owed the National Minimum Wage instead. The Agricultural Wages (Scotland) Order (No. 73) 2026, in force from 1 April 2026, sets £12.71 an hour, states overtime as that rate multiplied by 1.5 rather than as a money figure, and adds a further £1.91 an hour for a listed qualification and £11.18 a week for each working dog up to four. Northern Ireland's Order No 106 runs from Grade 2 at £13.30 an hour to Grade 5 at £14.44, and applies from the first pay reference period beginning on or after 1 April 2026. So a farm worker in Wrexham and a farm worker in Shrewsbury are on different legal minima for the same work. The second rule applies across the whole United Kingdom. Living accommodation is the only benefit in kind that can count towards the National Minimum Wage, and from 1 April 2026 it counts at £11.10 for each day the accommodation is provided, under regulation 16 of the National Minimum Wage Regulations 2015 as amended by S.I. 2026/357, which is £77.70 for a full week. Regulation 16(2) adds that accommodation is provided for a day only if it is provided for the whole of that day. If your employer houses you free, that amount is added to your pay for the minimum wage sum. If the charge is at or below the offset, nothing changes. If the charge is higher, the excess is taken off the pay that counts, which is how a tied cottage let at a market rent turns a lawful looking hourly rate into an underpayment.

Income Tax (Earnings and Pensions) Act 2003, Part 5, Chapter 6 (sections 378 to 385), with the meaning of "offshore installation" taken from section 1001 of the Income Tax Act 2007

Seafarers' Earnings Deduction

In force 6 April 2011 and 15 March 2018, the two dated changes confirmed from source. Names 3 occupations. 31 dated primary sources.

• Dock Worker / Stevedore
• Ferry Crew Member
• Royal Navy Midshipman

The Seafarers' Earnings Deduction takes 100% of your qualifying earnings out of charge to UK income tax. Section 379 of ITEPA 2003 says the deduction is allowed from the earnings attributable to the eligible period and "is equal to that amount", so on a good claim the tax on that pay is nil. Nothing else in UK employment tax does that. It never appears on your payslip. Your employer runs PAYE on your normal tax code all year and takes income tax off every payday, and you get the money back afterwards by filing a Self Assessment return: the pay goes on the Employment page as usual and the deduction goes in box 11 on page Ai 2 of the Additional information pages, with the names of every ship you worked on in box 19 on page TR 7. The test is hard and it is all or nothing. You need an eligible period of at least 365 days made up mainly of days you were outside the UK at midnight, no single return visit to the UK longer than 183 days, and the days you spent in the UK never more than half the days in the period up to the end of the next spell abroad. You must be resident in the UK or in an EEA state other than the UK. Crown employees cannot claim, which rules out the Royal Navy, though Royal Fleet Auxiliary crew can. An offshore installation is not a ship, so a rig worker is not a seafarer for this. The deduction is income tax only. Your National Insurance is worked out under separate rules and carries on as normal.

National Minimum Wage Regulations 2015 (S.I. 2015/621), regulations 27 and 32, as interpreted by Royal Mencap Society v Tomlinson-Blake and Shannon v Rampersad [2021] UKSC 8

Sleep-in shifts, on-call time and the minimum wage

In force 6 April 2015 for the Regulations, with judgment in Mencap given 19 March 2021. Names 4 occupations. 40 dated primary sources.

• Care Home Manager
• Care Worker
• Healthcare Assistant
• Senior Support Worker

A sleep-in shift is a shift you spend at or near your workplace, allowed to sleep, expected to get up only if something happens. On 19 March 2021 the Supreme Court decided what those hours are worth. In Royal Mencap Society v Tomlinson-Blake and Shannon v Rampersad [2021] UKSC 8 it held that a worker who is permitted to sleep is available for work rather than working, so for National Minimum Wage purposes only the hours actually spent awake for the purposes of working go into the sum. Both workers lost. The court overruled British Nursing Association and Scottbridge Construction, the two cases that had said the opposite, and said the earlier reasoning should no longer be regarded as authority. The rule sits in regulation 32(2) of the National Minimum Wage Regulations 2015 for time work and in regulation 27(2) for salaried hours work, in almost the same words: hours when you are available count only when you are awake for the purposes of working. Regulation 32(2) reaches a worker who by arrangement sleeps at or near a place of work where the employer provides suitable facilities for sleeping; regulation 27(2) reaches a worker who is required to sleep there, on the same facilities condition. Lady Arden noticed the gap at paragraph 42 of Mencap and it has never been resolved. So a flat allowance for a nine hour night, with an hourly rate on top for the time you are up, can be lawful pay. The number of times you are woken makes no difference to the rest of the shift. What the judgment did not touch is everything else those hours are used for. The same night can be working time for the 48 hour week under the Working Time Regulations 1998 while counting for almost nothing under minimum wage law, because the two sets of rules ask different questions of the same hours. The line is drawn at the arrangement rather than at the disturbance: where the main point of the shift is that you sleep, and dealing with a call is secondary to that, it is a sleep-in. Where you are rostered to stay awake, it is not a sleep-in at all, and every hour counts.

The Road Transport (Working Time) Regulations 2005 (S.I. 2005/639), with the assimilated drivers' hours rules in Regulation (EC) 561/2006

Drivers' working time and periods of availability

In force 4 April 2005, as substantially amended on 11 May 2012. Names 6 occupations. 31 dated primary sources.

• Bus Driver
• Courier
• Delivery Driver
• HGV Driver
• Removals Operative
• Truck Driver

If you drive for a living, the law cuts your day into categories that do not line up with the hours you get paid for. The Road Transport (Working Time) Regulations 2005 reach you as a mobile worker where you drive or travel in a vehicle that is in scope of the assimilated drivers' hours rules: for goods, a maximum permissible mass over 3.5 tonnes including any trailer or semi-trailer, and for passengers, a vehicle built or permanently adapted to carry more than nine people including the driver. Those Regulations cap your working time at an average of 48 hours a week across a reference period of 17 weeks, or 26 weeks where a collective or workforce agreement provides for it, and at 60 hours in any single week. There is no individual opt-out from the 48 hour average, and that is the sharpest difference between these rules and the Working Time Regulations 1998 that cover most other jobs. Do any night work and your working time cannot exceed 10 hours in any 24 hour period unless an agreement extends it, with night time running from midnight to 4am for goods vehicles and from 1am to 5am for passenger vehicles. The category that makes a driver's payslip refuse to match the day is the period of availability. Regulation 2 defines it as a period during which the mobile worker is not required to remain at his workstation, but is required to be available, to answer any calls to start or resume driving or to carry out other work, including periods during which the mobile worker is accompanying a vehicle being transported by a ferry or by a train as well as periods of waiting at frontiers and those due to traffic prohibitions. Regulation 5 then says the times of breaks, rests and periods of availability are not included in the calculation of working time. So a wait at a loading bay whose length you were told about before it started, a ferry crossing, and the hours a second driver spends in the passenger seat of a moving cab all sit outside the 48 hour average. Nothing in the Regulations says a period of availability has to be paid, and nothing sets a rate for it. The only mention of money in the whole instrument is regulation 9(3), which says compensation for night work must not be given in any manner liable to endanger road safety. That is how you can be away from home for fourteen hours, break no rule at all, and be paid for nine. Pay is settled somewhere else: in your contract, and underneath it in the National Minimum Wage Regulations 2015, which run their own definition of working time and do not use the road transport categories at all. Regulation 32 of those Regulations treats hours when a worker is available, and required to be available, at or near a place of work for the purposes of working as time work, unless the worker is at home. A period of availability under the 2005 Regulations can therefore still be time work for the minimum wage, and the two answers are reached by two different tests.

Working Time Regulations 1998, regulations 13A, 15B, 15F, 16 and 16A, as amended by the Employment Rights (Amendment, Revocation and Transitional Provision) Regulations 2023 (S.I. 2023/1426), and Harpur Trust v Brazel [2022] UKSC 21

Term time only pay and holiday pay for part-year workers

In force leave years beginning on or after 1 April 2024, with Brazel decided 20 July 2022. Names 12 occupations. 17 dated primary sources.

• Care Worker
• Cleaner
• Exam Invigilator
• Farm Worker
• Higher Level Teaching Assistant
• Kitchen Porter
• Local Government NJC SCP 1 (Entry Grade)
• Midday Supervisor (Lunchtime Supervisor)
• and 4 more

A term time only salary is a full time full year salary reduced twice: once for the hours you work in a week, and once for the weeks you are paid for in a year. The weeks figure is not the number of weeks you teach or supervise or clean. It is those weeks plus the paid leave and public holidays you have earned, measured against the 52.143 weeks in a year that the NJC Green Book gets from 365 divided by 7. Most employers then pay the result in twelve equal instalments, so the same figure lands in August as in November and the arithmetic disappears from the payslip. What your holiday pay should be depends on which leave year you are asking about. In Harpur Trust v Brazel [2022] UKSC 21 the Supreme Court held that the leave of a part-year worker under a permanent contract is not required by EU law to be, and under domestic law is not, pro rated to that of a full time worker: she was entitled to 5.6 weeks paid at her average week's pay, and the 12.07% method her employer had used was not the statutory method. Parliament then changed the regulations. For leave years beginning on or after 1 April 2024, a worker who meets the definition of an irregular hours worker or a part-year worker in regulation 15F accrues leave at 12.07% of the hours worked in each pay period, capped at 28 days, and the employer may pay that leave as a 12.07% uplift with every payment instead of when leave is taken. Where it does, regulation 16A(7) says the payslip must indicate the amount of holiday pay paid for the period. For any leave year that began before 1 April 2024, Brazel is still the answer, and it is still the answer in Northern Ireland, where the equivalent regulations were not amended. The open question is whether a term time worker paid in twelve equal instalments is a part-year worker at all, because regulation 15F(1)(b) requires periods of at least a week for which the worker is not paid, and someone paid every month is paid in those weeks. The regulations do not say, the gov.uk guidance does not address it, and no court has ruled on it.

Employment Rights Act 1996, Part II, sections 13 to 27, with sections 17 to 22 for workers in retail employment

Deductions from wages, and the retail 10% cap

In force 22 August 1996, with the two year backstop from 1 July 2015 and the hours line on the payslip from 6 April 2019. Names 15 occupations. 28 dated primary sources.

• Bar Staff
• Barber
• Barista
• Beautician
• Chef
• Courier
• Delivery Driver
• Dog Groomer
• and 7 more

Part II of the Employment Rights Act 1996 controls what an employer may take out of your pay, and sections 17 to 22 add a second layer for anyone in retail employment. Section 13 is the general rule: a deduction is lawful only where a statutory provision or a relevant provision of your contract requires or authorises it, or where you signified your agreement to it in writing beforehand. Section 17(2) then defines retail employment as work involving, whether or not on a regular basis, either the carrying out of retail transactions directly with members of the public, fellow workers or other individuals in their personal capacities, or the collection of amounts payable in connection with retail transactions carried out by other people. Section 17(3) counts the sale or supply of goods and the supply of services as retail transactions, so a bar, a salon and a restaurant are inside the definition alongside a shop. If you are inside it, section 18(1) says a deduction, or the total of several deductions, made on a pay day on account of one or more cash shortages or stock deficiencies may not exceed one tenth of the gross amount of the wages payable to you on that day. Section 27(4) defines that gross amount as the total before deductions of whatever nature, so the tenth is measured off the top line of the payslip and not off what reaches your bank. Sections 20 and 21 put the same tenth and a set of written conditions on money the employer asks you to hand over rather than deduct, and sections 18(3) and 20(3)(b) give the employer twelve months from the date it established the shortage, or ought reasonably to have done so, to start recovering it. The cap is not a limit on what you can owe. It limits what comes off any one pay packet, and section 22(2) removes it from the final instalment of wages when the job ends. These sections extend to England, Wales and Scotland.

Employment Rights Act 2025 (2025 c. 36), section 159, and the commencement regulations made under it

The Employment Rights Act 2025, phase by phase

In force in phases from 18 December 2025. Not tied to an occupation. 40 dated primary sources.

The Employment Rights Act 2025 is being commenced in phases, so whether one of its changes reaches you depends on a date rather than on your job. It received Royal Assent on 18 December 2025 as chapter 36. Section 159 brought sections 19, 37 and 78 into force that day, along with the Act's own final provisions, then a block of trade union provisions two months later on 18 February 2026, and left the rest of the Act to regulations made by the Secretary of State. Five sets of those regulations have been made: S.I. 2026/3, S.I. 2026/323, S.I. 2026/373, S.I. 2026/559 and S.I. 2026/954. Four dates in them matter to pay. On 6 April 2026 statutory sick pay lost its waiting days and its lower earnings limit, so it runs from the first qualifying day and the weekly amount is the lower of £123.25 and 80% of your normal weekly earnings. The same day the maximum protected period for a protective award, ordered where an employer fails to consult on a collective redundancy, went from 90 days to 180, and employers had to start keeping records adequate to show they have given the right annual leave and paid for it, for six years. On 7 April 2026 most of Part 5 came into force, which is what GOV.UK records as the establishment of the Fair Work Agency, but most of it only so far as it relates to the legislation regulation 4(2) of S.I. 2026/323 specifies, and that list leaves out statutory sick pay and the Working Time Regulations 1998. On 1 October 2026 three separate instruments move tribunal time limits from three months to six, and only one of the three is made under the Act. Section 152 and Schedule 12 of the Act cover unlawful deduction from wages, unfair dismissal, discrimination, working time and holiday pay. S.I. 2026/759 covers a claim for breach of a contract of employment in England and Wales, which is the route for unpaid notice pay, and leaves Scotland on three months. S.I. 2026/758 covers seven more, including a part time worker's complaint that the hourly rate is less favourable than a comparable full timer's. On 1 January 2027 the qualifying period for ordinary unfair dismissal falls from two years to six months and the cap on the compensatory award is repealed. The Act changes nothing about the itemised pay statement itself: the word "itemised" does not appear in it and sections 8 and 9 of the Employment Rights Act 1996 are untouched. Several changes that have been reported as though they had started have not, including the tipping consultation duty in section 14, the right to guaranteed hours and the right to a payment when a shift is cancelled, moved or curtailed at short notice. A provision's status can change with one statutory instrument, so every date below is given with the instrument that set it and with the day the source was read, 28 September 2026.