Employment Edit: 16 April 2026

Legal updates

Trade union access

Last week, the government responded to its consultation into the right of trade unions to access workplaces. Under that new right, which is set to come into force in October this year, unions can seek access to a workplace for the purposes of meeting, recruiting or organising workers or facilitating collective bargaining. Access rights will be set out in enforceable ‘access agreements’, with such agreements either agreed between the employer and trade union or, where the union and employer are unable to agree, being determined by the Central Arbitration Committee (CAC).

In its consultation response, the government outlined several features of the planned statutory framework for access agreements. These include that:

• access requests and employer responses must be in writing, with email as the preferred method.
• unions will be required to provide certain information in access requests, including the type of access requested, a general description of the workers access is being sought to and the frequency of access requested.
• similarly, employers will be required to provide certain information in their responses to access requests, including (where relevant) the reasons for rejection of the request.
• employers with fewer than 21 employees will be exempt.
• where the CAC finds that a party has breached the terms of an access agreement, the maximum penalty it can issue will be £75,000 for first breach, £150,000 for second breach and £500,000 for third and repeated breaches.

In welcome news for employers, the government intends to implement longer time-periods for handling access requests than the very tight timeframes it had proposed in the original consultation. The employer will now have 15 working days within which to respond to an access request (up from 5 working days) and, if the request is rejected, the parties will have 25 working days within which to negotiate (up from 15 working days). If either party wishes to refer the matter to the CAC, this will need to be done within 55 working days (up from 25 working days) of the access request being made. Further details on the timeframes and process for requesting access are set out in the draft code of practice on trade union right of access, which was published alongside the consultation response.

Harassment & discrimination – NDA reform

One of the ERA 2025 measures aimed at tackling workplace harassment and discrimination is a ban on the use of certain non-disclosure and confidentiality clauses. Under this ban, clauses or agreements between employers and workers that purport to prevent the worker from making disclosures relating to harassment or discrimination or the employer’s response to such harassment or discrimination will be void.

The ERA provides that “excepted agreements” will not be subject to this ban, but what will constitute an “excepted agreement” will be detailed in secondary legislation. Yesterday, the government launched consultation seeking feedback on its proposed criteria for “excepted agreements” (including a requirement for independent advice on the terms and effect of the agreement and a proposed “cooling off period” within which the worker can choose to withdraw from the agreement), as well as the individuals and bodies that workers who sign excepted agreements will still be able to speak to regardless of what is said in the agreement. On our ERA hub, we have explored the proposed criteria in more detail and considered what excepted agreements could mean for employers.

TUPE reform?

One of the commitments made by the Labour party in its Plan to Make Work Pay was to “strengthen the existing set of rights and protections for workers subject to TUPE processes”. To inform the TUPE reform options that the government intends to draw up, it has now published a call for evidence on the TUPE Regulations.

The government is seeking input on a range of TUPE-related topics, including:

• the extent to which the current rules governing when an employer can change the contractual terms and conditions of an employee post-TUPE transfer strike the right balance between supporting employer needs and protecting employees.
• whether collective agreements between trade unions and employers are sufficiently protected under a TUPE transfer.
• whether pensions rights are sufficiently protected under a TUPE transfer.

The call for evidence will close on 1 July 2026.

Conditional offers

The EAT has held that an employer who withdrew an accepted job offer was in breach of contract when it terminated the contract without giving reasonable notice.

The candidate was offered a project manager role, subject to receipt of satisfactory references and a right-to-work check. The offer letter did not provide any details about the notice period required to terminate the employment. The candidate accepted the offer and provided referee details and electronic right-to-work documents. A few days later, the employer withdrew the offer due to a delay in the underlying project. The claimant brought a claim for breach of contract.

The tribunal found that there was no binding contract in place as satisfactory references had not yet been received and the right to work checks were incomplete until original documents had been provided. The EAT disagreed – based on its analysis of the offer letter, the EAT found that the conditions in the offer were “conditions subsequent”. This meant that a contract was formed once the offer letter was accepted and, if the conditions were then not met, the contract could be terminated. The EAT implied a term into the offer letter requiring reasonable notice to be given on termination. Given the seniority of the role, the lengthy recruitment process and the employee’s planned relocation, three months’ notice was reasonable. The case underlines the importance of carefully drafting offer letters to ensure that any conditions of the offer are clear and to set out the notice period that would apply in the event of any conditions not being met.

(Kankanalapalli v Loesche Energy Systems Ltd)

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