The Employment Rights Act 2025, phase by phase: what is in force and what is not

The published figures

What it puts on, or takes off, the payslip

Statutory sick pay

From 6 April 2026 the SSP line starts on the first qualifying day of a period of entitlement rather than the fourth, and there is no earnings floor below which it is not paid at all. The weekly figure is the lower of £123.25 and 80% of your normal weekly earnings, so a low paid worker sees a figure below the flat rate rather than nothing. Section 157(3) of the 1992 Act still divides the weekly rate by the number of qualifying days in the week.

The itemised pay statement

Nothing changes. Sections 8 and 9 of the Employment Rights Act 1996 set out what a pay statement has to show, including the hours line where pay varies with hours worked, and the Act does not amend either of them. The word "itemised" does not appear anywhere in the Act. The only connection is the time limit in section 11(4) for a reference about a statement, which moves from three months to six on 1 October 2026.

Deductions from wages

What may lawfully be taken off is unchanged: sections 13 to 22 of the 1996 Act still govern it, including the one tenth cap on a cash shortage deduction in retail employment. What changes on 1 October 2026 is the window. Section 23(2) goes from three months to six, counted from the date of payment of the wages the deduction came out of, or from the last deduction in a series.

Holiday pay, and the record behind it

The amount of holiday pay is unchanged by the Act. From 6 April 2026 section 35 inserts regulation 16B into the Working Time Regulations 1998, and the employer must keep the records for six years. Regulation 16B(1)(a) names seven provisions, not four: the entitlements in regulations 13(1), 13A(1), 15B(2) and 16(1), and the requirements in regulations 14(2) and (6) and 15E(2). The first four are the leave and the right to be paid for it at a week of pay for each week. The other three are the money on the way out: regulation 14(2) is the payment in lieu where employment ends and the worker has taken less of the year's leave than the year has run, regulation 14(6) is the payment in lieu of leave carried forward from an earlier leave year, and regulation 15E(2) is the payment in lieu for an irregular hours or part year worker whose employment ends with regulation 15B(2) leave untaken. All three are a line on a final payslip.

Tips, service charge and tronc lines

Nothing on the payslip changes. The allocation and payment duties are still sections 27D and 27G of the 1996 Act, the written policy is still section 27I and the records are still section 27J. Section 14 of the Act would add a duty to consult workers before the first policy and to review it at least every three years, and it is not in force. What does change on 1 October 2026 is the time limit for a complaint about the policy or the records.

A short notice shift payment, which does not exist yet

Section 3 inserts section 27BP into the 1996 Act, a right to a payment each time a qualifying shift is cancelled, moved or curtailed at short notice, and Schedule 2 paragraph 7 would add that payment to the definition of wages in section 27(1) so it lands on the payslip and can found a deduction claim. The amount is left to regulations, capped by section 27BQ(1) at what you would have been paid for the hours lost. Only the power to make those regulations is in force, from 6 January 2026.

A protective award

A protective award is remuneration for a protected period, paid at a week of pay for each week of it, and it is ordered where an employer fails to consult on a collective redundancy. From 6 April 2026 the maximum protected period doubles to 180 days. Regulation 5 of S.I. 2026/323 confines that to dismissals taking effect on or after 6 April 2026, so an earlier dismissal keeps the 90 day maximum.

Statutory paternity pay, against paternity leave

These moved apart on 6 April 2026. Section 16 removed the qualifying period of employment for paternity leave, so the leave is available from the first day of a job. The pay is a separate test in section 171ZA(2)(b) of the 1992 Act, which still requires 26 weeks of continuous employment ending with the relevant week, and the Act does not touch it. A new starter can be entitled to the leave and not to the statutory pay.

What goes wrong

Acting on a headline for a provision with no commencement date

The Act contains 160 sections and 12 schedules and most of them were commenced, if at all, by regulations. Guaranteed hours, reasonable notice of shifts, payment for a cancelled shift and the tipping consultation duty in section 14 were all in the Act on 18 December 2025 and none of them was in force on 28 September 2026. On legislation.gov.uk a provision in that position is headed Prospective and carries the line "not in force at Royal Assent, see s. 159(3)".

Reading unfair dismissal as a day one right

Section 25(2) substitutes "six months" for "two years" in section 108(1) of the 1996 Act. It is six months, not zero, and it is not in force: S.I. 2026/559 regulation 3 commences it on 1 January 2027. Regulation 4 of that instrument turns on the effective date of termination, so a dismissal notified in December 2026 that takes effect in January 2027 is inside the new rule and one that takes effect on 31 December 2026 is not.

Using six months for something that happened before 1 October 2026

Regulation 4(1) of S.I. 2026/954 says the Schedule 12 amendments do not apply in any case where the relevant date occurs before 1 October 2026. For an unlawful deduction the relevant date is the date the wages the deduction came from were paid, or the last deduction in a series. A deduction from August 2026 pay therefore keeps three months, even though the claim is being worked out in October.

Using three months for something that happened on or after 1 October 2026

The transitional rule runs one way only. Once the relevant date falls on or after 1 October 2026 the limit is six months, and treating it as three costs three months of a live claim. The Schedule to S.I. 2026/954 sets the relevant date out enactment by enactment in two tables, and reg 4(2)(c) gives that instrument's default for anything not in them: the date of the act, conduct or failure complained of, or the last in a series.

Taking Schedule 12 as the whole of the 1 October 2026 change

Three instruments move a time limit that day and each has its own transitional rule. Schedule 12 is one of them and S.I. 2026/954 reg 4 keys it. S.I. 2026/759 art 3 keys the England and Wales breach of contract limit to the effective date of termination. S.I. 2026/758 reg 10 keys the seven limits in its regs 3 to 9. Reading reg 4(2)(c) of S.I. 2026/954 as the fallback for every 1 October claim puts the wrong rule on a part time pay complaint, a fixed term complaint or a notice pay claim, because Schedule 12 does not reach any of them.

Thinking the longer limit lifts the two year backstop

Schedule 12 paragraph 4(3) changes only subsections (2) and (4) of section 23 of the 1996 Act. Subsection (4A), which stops a tribunal looking at any deduction paid more than two years before the complaint was presented, is untouched and stays exactly where it was. A longer window to start a claim is not a longer period of arrears to recover in it.

Applying the new tips limit to the wrong tips complaint

There are two, with two different clocks. A complaint that tips were not allocated fairly or not paid on time is section 27K and its limit is twelve months, which Schedule 12 does not touch. A complaint about the written policy or the records is section 27N and its limit is three months, becoming six under Schedule 12 paragraph 4(4) where the failure happens on or after 1 October 2026. Reading across from one to the other gets both wrong.

Assuming the old sick pay rules still govern a sickness that began before 6 April 2026

S.I. 2026/373 carries four transitional regulations that pull absences across the line. Regulation 3 covers someone who had served one or two waiting days by 5 April 2026 and makes qualifying days from 6 April onwards payable. Regulation 4 protects a weekly rate of £123.25 for a straddling period of entitlement where normal weekly earnings were not less than £125 and not more than £154.05. Regulation 5 deems a period of entitlement to arise on the first day of incapacity falling on or after 6 April 2026 for someone in England, Wales or Scotland who got nothing because they were under the old lower earnings limit. Regulation 6 does the same for Northern Ireland. Regulation 5 has a cut off that decides the longest absences: paragraph (5) says regulation 5 does not apply to an employee whose period of incapacity for work began on or before 21 September 2025 where every day from 21 September 2025 to 5 April 2026 was a consecutive day of incapacity in that same period. Someone off sick without a break since before that date is outside the deeming.

What to check before relying on a date

• Section 159 splits the Act three ways: subsection (1) lists what started at Royal Assent, subsection (2) lists what started two months later, and subsection (3) leaves everything else to regulations made by the Secretary of State. It tells you where to look. If a provision is not named in section 159(1) or (2), no date exists for it until an instrument gives it one, however firm a press release sounds.
• Each provision's page on legislation.gov.uk carries a Commencement Information block naming the date, the instrument and the regulation, and a provision with no date is headed Prospective. This is the only record that is updated as instruments are made. It is what says, for example, that section 14 has no commencing instrument while sections 10 and 11 came into force on 6 April 2026 by S.I. 2026/373 regulation 2.
• Every commencement instrument ends with a note as to earlier commencement regulations, listing each provision already brought into force with its date and instrument number. The note in S.I. 2026/954, made 1 September 2026, is headed "brought into force by commencement regulations made before the date of these Regulations", so it reconciles four instruments and not five: S.I. 2026/3, S.I. 2026/323, S.I. 2026/373 and S.I. 2026/559. It cannot list its own section 152 and Schedule 12, and it does not. It marks with an asterisk any date that had not yet been reached when it was made.
• Regulation 4 of S.I. 2026/954 keys the six month limits to a relevant date, and its Schedule gives that date for each enactment in two tables. The relevant date is not the date you find out, and it is not the date you decide to claim. Table 2 lists regulation 18(2) of the Agency Workers Regulations 2010 twice, with one relevant date for an infringement of regulation 5, 12 or 17(2) and another for a regulation 13 complaint.
• From 6 April 2026 the sick pay line shows the lower of £123.25 a week and 80% of normal weekly earnings, from the first qualifying day, with the weekly figure divided by the qualifying days in that week. Both halves of the old rule are gone at once, so a worker who used to get nothing for the first three days and nothing at all below the lower earnings limit can now see a figure on both counts.
• The Act gives the labour market enforcement functions in Part 5 to the Secretary of State and Schedule 7 Part 1 lists the legislation they can cover, but only part of that list is switched on. Regulation 4(2) of S.I. 2026/323 defines the specified labour market legislation as paragraphs 1, 2, 13 to 20, 22 to 30, 33 and 34 of Part 1, and regulation 4(52) commences those paragraphs and no others. That is the Employment Agencies Act 1973, the financial penalty provisions in Part 2A of the Employment Tribunals Act 1996, the National Minimum Wage Act 1998, the Gangmasters (Licensing) Act 2004, the Fraud Act 2006, the Modern Slavery Act 2015 and the Act's own sections 119 to 129, 139, 140 and 142. Statutory sick pay is paragraphs 3 to 12 and the Working Time Regulations 1998 are paragraph 21, and neither is on that list. Both are still headed Prospective on legislation.gov.uk with the line "not in force at Royal Assent, see s. 159(3)". On 28 September 2026 unpaid sick pay and unpaid holiday pay are outside what the Secretary of State can enforce under Part 5, whatever the schedule to the Act suggests on its face. The name Fair Work Agency appears nowhere in the Act, and Part 2 of Schedule 7 allows the list to be amended by regulations.
• A notice of underpayment under section 103 requires the sum to be paid to the individual within 28 days, and section 107 sets the penalty at 200% of that sum, capped at £20,000 for each underpaid individual and never less than £100. The figures hold across the whole of Part 5 and their reach does not. S.I. 2026/323 regulation 4(11)(a) and 4(12)(c) commence sections 103 and 107 only so far as they relate to the specified labour market legislation, so they reach a minimum wage underpayment and not unpaid sick pay or unpaid holiday pay. Section 103(6) would bar a notice about a matter already before a tribunal by virtue of section 116, and section 116 is marked Prospective with no commencing instrument, so on 28 September 2026 there are no such proceedings for it to bar.

Questions

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