18th August 2025

The Employment Rights Bill 2025 – What’s New?

On October 10th 2024, the Government published its much anticipated Employment Rights Bill (the Bill). The Bill has gone through its 1st and 2nd reading in the House of Commons, and the Committee stage at the House of Lords. The Government have now released an implementation roadmap setting out the proposed dates for the changes.

 

Unfair Dismissal

Under current UK law, an employee generally needs to have 2 years continuous service in order to bring a claim for unfair dismissal.

The proposed Bill intends to change that, meaning employees will have the right to bring an unfair dismissal claim from day one. This means that employers will be obliged to follow a “fair dismissal process” for all employees, regardless of their length of service.

Regulations are likely to set out a probationary period, which the Government has mentioned may last around 9 months. Provided an employer serves notice during that initial period, there will be a “light touch” process for capability, conduct, illegality, or other substantial reason dismissals. Notably, if the reason for dismissal is redundancy, the “light touch” process will not apply.

The rights and changes in relation to unfair dismissal are expected to be implemented in 2027; we will know more once the regulations are drafted.

The Bill makes provision to amend the compensation that an employee who is unfairly dismissed, as a result of the “light touch process”, could claim from an employment tribunal.

Currently, an employee needs to have 2 years’ service to request written reasons for the dismissal. The Bill is changing this to state that employers must give written reasons (if requested) following the probationary period, or 3 months after if notice is served during this period.

Notably, the House of Lords have proposed to remove the above 9-month probation period entirely. Instead proposing to reduce the qualifying period for unfair dismissal from the current 2 years, down to 6 months. It is likely that the House of Commons will reject this proposal.

 

Fire and Rehire

While somewhat dubious, the notion of “firing and rehiring” is currently still permitted in the UK. This approach is often used to effect changes to an employees’ contractual terms.

The Bill will make “firing and rehiring” an employee (or dismissing an employee in order to replace them with a different employee who does the same or substantially the same work) an automatically unfair reason for dismissal.

The Bill has a limited exception where an employee is dismissed and re-hired to mitigate an employer’s financial difficulties, where at the time of the dismissal the variation of contractual terms was likely to effect the employer’s ability to carry on as a going concern (i.e. to remain in business), provided that the employer could not reasonably avoid having to make the variation of terms. An employer relying on this exception would still need to prove that the dismissal was fair and in considering fairness, the Bill states the following will be considered:

  1. whether the employer consulted with the employee about the variation (or consulted with an employee’s trade union or other person representing the interests of that employee); and
  2. whether the employer offered anything in return to the employee for agreeing to the variation

Significant amendments have been suggested to this section of the Bill, but it is currently not clear which changes have Government support and which do not.

 

Tribunal Time Limits

Currently, the time limits for most typical employment law claims (such as unfair dismissal, discrimination, deduction from wages etc) is 3 months less one day of the act complained of. The Bill proposes that this limitation period is increased to 6 months, giving employees extra time to bring tribunal claims.

 

Paternity Leave

Currently an employee must work for their employer for 26 weeks before they are eligible for paternity leave. The Bill will give employees the right to give notice of their intent to take paternity leave from the first day of their job. The requisite notice period will remain unchanged (at 15 weeks’ notice before the expected week of childbirth or as soon as reasonably practicable). The Bill also removes the restriction on taking Paternity Leave after taking Shared Parental Leave as currently, when Shared Parental Leave is taken, fathers or partners lose their right to take any Paternity Leave they have not already taken.

 

Sexual Harassment

The Worker Protection (Amendment to the Equality Act 2010) Act 2023 came into force on 26th October 2024 and introduced a legal duty on employers to take “reasonable steps” to prevent sexual harassment of their employees. However, the Bill will extend this duty to require employers to take “all reasonable steps” to prevent sexual harassment of their employees. A Minister of the Crown will have the power to make regulations and specify steps which an employer must take.

 

Protections for Pregnant Women and New Mothers

Currently, pregnant women and new mothers have enhanced protections against redundancy dismissals. This covers: the pregnancy period, the time spent on Maternity Leave and a return-to-work period. The protections put these employees in a priority pool for suitable and alternative roles if any are available and place them ahead of other employees who are also at risk of redundancy. However, the Bill will add an additional layer of protection by adding regulations making it unlawful to dismiss pregnant women, and mothers on Maternity Leave, or in the six months after they return to work – except in specific circumstances, to be covered by the regulations.

 

Flexible Working

 The Bill will amend existing legislation so that employers can only reject a flexible working request where it is reasonable to do so on the grounds of one (or more) of the eight business reasons already set out in primary legislation. These are:

  1. The burden of additional costs
  2. An inability to reorganise work amongst existing staff
  3. An inability to recruit additional staff
  4. A detrimental impact on quality
  5. A detrimental impact on performance
  6. A detrimental effect on ability to meet customer demand
  7. Insufficient work for the periods the employee proposes to work
  8. Planned structural changes to the business

 The ‘reasonableness’ differs from existing requirements; there is currently no requirement for employers to explain their decision. Once implemented, if an employer wants to reject a request, there will also be a requirement to conduct a consultation with the employee followed by a specified process which is be set out via secondary legislation. If an employer rejects a request, they must explain to the employee why their decision is reasonable.

For expert legal advice on any of the above items, don’t hesitate to contact our team at info@bussmurton.co.uk or call 01892 510 222.

Barney Bose

Barney Bose
Solicitor