Employment Edit: 1 October 2026

Legal updates

New employer duty to inform workers of right to join a trade union

As part of a broader government effort to seek a greater role for collective voice in workplace relations, the reforms under the Employment Rights Act 2025 (ERA) will shortly require employers to inform all their workers of their right to join a trade union on joining and on an annual (or ongoing) basis. Importantly this duty applies to all employers – not just those who recognise trade unions. The government published its response to the consultation on this reform last week and key points are as follows:

• What should be in the statement? The government will provide a standardised statement (not to be amended except where specified) for employers to provide to new and existing workers.
  
  The written statement will provide ‘clear, neutral’ information on the right to join a trade union as well as a brief explanation of union functions, a link to the Certification Officer’s list of trade unions and a summary of statutory rights.  
  
  In addition, the employer will also need to include information on and contact details of the trade unions it recognises (including, where relevant, the staff group(s), grades or locations covered where the listed union(s) do not apply to all workers) and/or of the unions with statutory access agreements in place.

• Who gets the statement and how do they get it? The statement should be provided to all workers – for new workers it should be provided when they receive their written statement of employment particulars. For existing workers, employers can:
  • provide the statement directly to workers annually by 5 April; or
  • provide it indirectly e.g. on virtual or physical noticeboards so long as the worker knows where to find the statement, has continuous and reasonable access to it and is reminded by 5 April each year that the statement is available and where to find it. Should the location of the statement change, the employer must inform workers directly of such change.

• Updating requirements? If there is a change to recognised trade unions or statutory access agreements, the statement must be re-issued within one month of such change.
• Next steps: The duty is expected to come into force in January 2027 (not this October as previously indicated). Employers will be required to issue the statement to all new workers who join from the commencement date in January and to deliver the statement to all existing employees by 5 April 2027.

New right to bereavement leave

New statutory bereavement leave rights are set to come into force in April 2027, according to the government’s consultation response published last week.

The ERA allows the government to introduce this leave and, in its response, the government has now outlined the scope of the new entitlements. These new rights are in addition to existing rights to parental bereavement leave for parents whose child dies under the age of 18 or who experience a stillbirth after 24 weeks of pregnancy. Headline points of the new entitlement include the following:

• Leave will be available, as a day one right, to employees who experience a bereavement of their spouse or partner, or parent, adult children, or sibling (in each case including biological, adopted, step, and half-relations) or equivalent parental relationships for those raised in kinship arrangements or by foster carers.
• Leave will also be available to employees who experience any type of pregnancy loss before 24 weeks (including terminations and IVF embryo transfer loss) and to their spouse, partner, intended co-parent and intended parents in surrogacy arrangements.
• Eligible employees will be entitled to up to two weeks’ leave, based on their average working pattern. They will be able to take this leave in the 56 weeks following the bereavement and may take it in one block or in separate blocks, as long as each period of leave is at least one day.
• The statutory entitlement will be to unpaid leave. The government notes that it will be up to employers to decide if they wish to enhance the leave, either with pay or by offering more than the minimum 2 weeks’ entitlement.

The government will now draft regulations to reflect the various policy points outlined in its response. Given the volume of upcoming reforms, we encourage employers to review their current bereavement leave offering now to identify whether it will be compliant with the new entitlement and to consider how, if at all, they may want to enhance the entitlement to align with other related policies. Read more about this new entitlement on our ERA hub.

Reasonable adjustments

The EAT has confirmed that individual employees can be personally liable for a failure to make reasonable adjustments for a disabled worker, even though the legal duty to make those adjustments falls on the employer.
 
The claimant was engaged by an agency as a tutor for a person with special needs. The claimant developed disabilities which made it difficult for her to attend the tutee’s premises in person, and she asked for adjustments to her role including the ability to work online rather than face-to-face. The employment tribunal allowed her reasonable adjustments claim to proceed against her employer but struck out similar claims against four individual agency employees, ruling that such claims could not be brought against individuals as the duty to make reasonable adjustments lies with the employer.
 
The EAT overturned that decision. It held that whilst the duty to make reasonable adjustments falls on the employer, because a company can only act through its agents or employees, where an employee does something that amounts to a breach of that duty, that employee can be held personally liable under the Equality Act 2010. The tribunal’s original decision to strike out the claims against the individual employees was therefore reversed, and they were rejoined to the proceedings.
 
(Merriman v 1st Staff Ltd and others)