An employer’s handbook to the Employment Rights Bill and beyond

By Luke Bowery Kate Redshaw Katie Wooller

7 Aug 2025 3 min read

In this handbook, we keep a track of the government’s programme of employment law reforms in the Employment Rights Bill and beyond and consider what the changes mean for employers

In its ‘Plan to Make Work Pay’, the Labour party detailed an ambitious and wide-ranging set of employment law proposals. The Employment Rights Bill, first published in October 2024 and now progressing through the final stages of the Parliamentary approval process, is the first significant step of Labour making good on its promise to deliver ‘the biggest upgrade to rights at work in a generation’. With wide-ranging provisions that will deliver a host of new individual and collective rights as well as a more prominent role for trade unions, the Bill will have far-reaching consequences for employers when it becomes law.

To help employers navigate the road ahead, we have put together a user-friendly handbook where we look at each of the key, proposed reforms and consider what they mean for employers.

Read the handbook here

Our handbook at a glance

In this handbook, you will find information, in an easy-to-read format, about each of the key proposed reforms, including the current legal position, details of the proposed changes and likely timeframes for implementation along with our commentary on the impact for employers.

Looking ahead

The Bill is currently progressing through Parliament and some of its provisions have been amended during this process. In July 2025, several important government-backed amendments were approved by the House of Lords, including significant changes to the original ‘fire and rehire’ provisions, a new right to pregnancy loss bereavement leave and a ban on the use of non-disclosure agreements to prevent disclosures relating to harassment and discrimination (read more about these changes here). We have updated this handbook to reflect these amendments and now await the next stage of Parliament’s review of the Bill in September. Meanwhile, we will continue to report on important developments via our fortnightly newsletter, Employment Edit.

Additional (and necessary) detail to many of the reforms in the Bill will be issued as separate regulations. These regulations will be subject to consultation prior to issue – indeed consultations on several issues have already been completed and several more consultations are due to start in summer and autumn 2025. This means that, even though the Bill is expected to become law in autumn 2025, many of the new rights will not come into force until much later – several reforms are set to take effect in 2026 with further changes, including day one unfair dismissal rights, not coming into force until 2027. The government has published an implementation roadmap to help employers, workers and unions gauge the likely timeframe for implementation of these reforms. You can read more about the roadmap here.

Whilst the Bill is the vehicle for many of the government’s proposed reforms, it does not include all of them. The government intends to bring forward a wide range of other reforms through other mechanisms including through additional primary legislation, regulations and codes of practice. Some of these measures will be alongside the Bill and others will be in the longer term.

Contact Us

If you would like to discuss any of the proposed reforms contained in the Employment Rights Bill or other anticipated changes, contact Luke Bowery or your usual Burges Salmon representative from our wider Employment team.

Disclaimer: This update gives general information only and is not intended to be exhaustive. Although we have taken care over the information, you should not rely on it as legal advice. We do not accept any liability to anyone who does rely on its contents.