Three measures from the Employment Rights Act 2025 reach UK employers inside a single quarter: a six-month tribunal claim window on 1 October, a harassment prevention duty on 30 October and a shorter qualifying period for unfair dismissal on 1 January 2027. The government’s own implementation timeline places all three within about three months.
What lands, and when
The Department for Business and Trade keeps a running timetable of Employment Rights Act measures. Its latest update, revised on 25 September 2026, confirms what takes effect in October and what follows in January. The list is short, but each item changes a different part of the HR operating model.
On 1 October 2026 the time limit for bringing an employment tribunal claim moved from three months to six. For breach of employment contract claims in Scotland, the same change arrives on 9 November 2026.
On 30 October 2026 the timeline lists the harassment measures. Employers will be required to take “all reasonable steps” to prevent sexual harassment of their employees. A separate obligation says employers must not permit harassment of their employees by third parties. The measures also introduce a power for a minister to make regulations later, specifying evidence-based steps that employers must take. The government says that power will complement, not replace, the broader requirement. The timeline carries a standing caveat that future dates remain subject to parliamentary processes and may change.
From 1 January 2027 the qualifying period for unfair dismissal drops to six months for dismissals from that date, and compensatory awards are uncapped. Fire and rehire protections and the duty to inform workers of their right to join a trade union arrive in the same month. We covered the new union notice duty when its date was confirmed, and the day-one bereavement leave for pregnancy loss sits in the 2027 group.
Two clocks run side by side until December
The tribunal change does not apply to everything at once. Acas, the conciliation service, explains that the limit depends on when the problem at work happened. For a problem before 1 October 2026, most claims carry a limit of three months minus one day. Acas gives an example: an employee paid the wrong amount on 30 September 2026 has until 11:59pm on 29 December 2026. For a problem on or after 1 October 2026, most claims carry six months minus one day, so an employee paid the wrong amount on 1 October 2026 has until 11:59pm on 31 March 2027.
That means any HR team handling a dispute through the end of December has to look at the event date before it looks at the claim type. Two employees with the same complaint can sit under different limits.
Acas also lists the points that have not changed. Internal grievance, disciplinary or appeal procedures do not alter the time limit, even when they run long. Notifying Acas for early conciliation pauses the limit until conciliation ends, but only when the employee notifies within the original limit. A claim filed late can still be heard, though Acas says the judge decides whether to accept it and that “in most cases time limits are strictly enforced.”
Our read: the evidence window just doubled
The rest of this section is our analysis, not a statement from the government or Acas.
A six-month limit changes how long an employer’s records need to stay useful. Acas says an unfair dismissal clock generally starts from the last day of the notice period, or from the dismissal date when no notice is given. Pay claims start when the employee was not paid correctly, and discrimination claims start from the most recent act the employee includes. Each of those start points produces a document trail: a payroll run, a termination letter, a manager’s note. A dispute raised near the end of a six-month window depends on whether that trail still exists and can be found.
The change gives HR and IT a concrete audit to run. Check whether any case management tool, chat retention setting or HRIS audit log purges data sooner than six months after the event it records.
The harassment measures add a second evidence question. A duty to take “all reasonable steps” is a duty a business has to be able to show it met. Training attendance, complaint logs, risk assessments and the actions taken after each report are the natural proof. The ministerial power to specify steps later means the list of expected steps could become more prescriptive, so records kept now should be organised by step, not just stored.
Flexible working is the next one in line
Flexible working is further out. Acas expects the new rules to take effect in autumn 2027 and on 1 October opened a consultation on a revised statutory code of practice, closing at 11:59pm on 17 December 2026. In the foreword to the consultation, Baroness Jones of Whitchurch, the Acas Chair, wrote: “Relatively few disagreements about flexible working currently progress to an employment tribunal.” Acas puts the figure at less than 1% of the early conciliation notifications and tribunal claims it receives.
That low base rate sits against two other facts from the same Acas consultation: employers will need to follow mandatory consultation steps before refusing a request, and tribunals must take the code into account where it is relevant to a case. The cost of a refusal that cannot be explained is therefore likely to rise even if the number of claims stays small.
What it means for the HR leader
For a UK employer, the three dates translate into a short checklist.
- Before 29 December. Tag every live dispute with its event date, since the three-month and six-month regimes both apply until then.
- Before 30 October. Inventory the steps the business already takes against sexual harassment, including third-party contact such as customers and agency staff, and record who owns each one.
- Before 1 January. List every employee between roughly three and six months of service. From that date a dismissal after six months of service can be challenged as unfair, and probation reviews carry more weight.
- By 17 December. Decide whether to respond to the Acas consultation. Responses are limited to 500 words per open-text question.
The practical test for each item is retrieval. If a record for a given decision cannot be pulled within a day, the process around it is the part to fix first.
