Several of the Employment Rights Act changes are already law and already costing money. The two that reach a client-facing veterinary practice hardest arrive on 1 October and 30 October 2026, and the unfair dismissal change is January 2027 with a six-month qualifying period — not day one from 2026, whatever earlier reporting said.
Article · 13 July 2026
The Employment Rights Act 2025 received Royal Assent in December 2025 and is being commenced in tranches. Several tranches have already landed, which is why a practice payroll that has not been looked at since the spring may already be wrong. Two more arrive in October 2026, and the one everybody has heard about — unfair dismissal — is January 2027, not 2026.
The order below follows the government's own implementation timeline, updated on 16 July 2026. Where earlier commentary conflicts with it, the timeline governs.
| Date | What changed |
|---|---|
| December 2025 | Repeal of the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act 2023 |
| 18 February 2026 | Repeal of most Trade Union Act 2016 provisions; simplified industrial action and ballot notices; dismissal protections for industrial action; eligibility notice for day-one paternity and unpaid parental leave |
| 1 April 2026 | Repeal of the Certification Officer levy |
| 6 April 2026 | Day-one paternity leave and unpaid parental leave; SSP with the Lower Earnings Limit and the waiting period removed; doubled maximum period for a collective redundancy protective award; enhanced whistleblower protection on sexual harassment; bereaved partners' paternity leave with 52 weeks available; voluntary gender-equality and menopause action plans; simplified trade union recognition |
| 7 April 2026 | Fair Work Agency established |
Two of those need spelling out for a veterinary practice.
Statutory Sick Pay used to have two filters. An employee had to earn at least the Lower Earnings Limit to qualify at all, and the first three days of absence were unpaid waiting days. From 6 April 2026 both have gone: no earnings floor, no waiting period.
Think about who that reaches in a practice. The Lower Earnings Limit for 2026/27 is £6,708 a year. A weekend receptionist, a Saturday-morning nurse, a part-time kennel assistant or a student on a few shifts a week can sit below it comfortably — and previously fell outside SSP entirely. They are now in it, and they are paid from the first day of absence rather than the fourth.
For a practice with a rota built out of short shifts, this is a change in the cost base rather than a change in paperwork. A single-day absence that used to cost nothing in SSP now does not, and the people most likely to take single-day absences are exactly the population that was previously excluded.
Take one receptionist working 30 hours a week on the National Living Wage, which from 1 April 2026 is £12.71 an hour for those aged 21 and over. Illustrative figures, on 2026/27 rates.
Two thresholds sit inside that. The pay is above the auto-enrolment earnings trigger of £10,000, so this employee is enrolled, with qualifying earnings measured from a lower level of £6,240. And the practice's total employer NIC bill can be offset by the £10,500 Employment Allowance — which covers roughly four such posts before it runs out, because £10,500 divided by £2,224.14 is about 4.7. A practice with eight or ten people on the payroll will exhaust it and start paying employer NIC in cash. The 18-to-20 rate is £10.85 and the under-18 and apprentice rate £8.00, which is why the age mix of a reception and support team materially changes the total.
The time limit for bringing an Employment Tribunal claim extends from three months to six months on 1 October 2026. In Scotland, breach-of-contract claims follow on 9 November 2026.
This sounds procedural and is not. Doubling the window doubles the period during which a departure can come back, which changes two practical things: how long a practice keeps the documents that would defend a claim, and how much care goes into the exit itself. A dismissal handled roughly in month one used to be relatively unlikely to surface after month four. That comfort has gone.
Two changes land together on 30 October 2026, and for a client-facing practice they are the most significant thing in the whole Act.
First, the duty to take all reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment. Note the wording: not reasonable steps, all reasonable steps. Second, and this is the one that reaches a veterinary practice specifically, liability for third-party harassment of employees. Third parties means people who are not colleagues. In a practice, that means clients.
A veterinary waiting room is an unusually charged environment. People arrive frightened, in a hurry, sometimes grieving, and frequently in dispute about a bill. Reception staff and nurses absorb the first wave of that. From 30 October 2026 an employer can be liable where an employee is harassed by a client, which turns a recurring reality of practice life into an employment law exposure.
What "all reasonable steps" looks like is a question for an employment lawyer on your own facts, and this article is not that. What is plainly implied is a practice that can show it did something in advance rather than reacting afterwards: a written policy that staff have actually seen, a route for reporting an incident that does not depend on telling the person who witnessed it, a record of incidents that were reported, training that happened on a date you can point to, and a willingness to end a client relationship where the behaviour continues. That last one is a commercial decision an owner has to be prepared to back.
This is the change most often misreported and it is worth stating precisely. From January 2027 the unfair dismissal qualifying period is cut to six months. Alongside it come uncapped compensatory awards and fire-and-rehire protections.
Earlier reporting described this as day-one unfair dismissal rights from 2026. The government's own implementation timeline gives January 2027 and a six-month qualifying period. Where the two conflict, the primary source governs, and a practice planning its recruitment and probation around "day one from 2026" is planning around something that is not happening.
Six months is still a large change from two years. It compresses the period in which a hiring mistake can be corrected without an unfair dismissal risk to roughly a single probation cycle, which means the probation process has to be real: objectives written down, reviews that happen on the dates they are meant to, and a decision taken before the six months rather than drifting past it. Uncapped compensatory awards change the arithmetic of getting it wrong.
Two of those deserve a flag for veterinary employers. Guaranteed hours reaches any practice that staffs its rota with variable-hours contracts, which is most of them. And umbrella company regulation matters where locum cover is booked through an intermediary rather than engaged directly.
The government's implementation timeline for the Plan to Make Work Pay and the Employment Rights Act, as updated on 16 July 2026. Several of the later items are described by year rather than by a specific date, and commencement regulations can move them. The already-in-force dates are settled; the 2027 entries should be read as the current published plan rather than as fixed law.
The payroll mechanics of all of this — SSP, statutory leave, auto-enrolment, the Employment Allowance — are what practice payroll covers, with the detail in the payroll and employment rights guide. What the changes mean for the people on the receiving end is on veterinary nurses and practice teams. Where locum cover is engaged through a company, the status question is in the IR35 guide for locum vets. This is general information about the published timetable, not employment law advice.
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The 6 April 2026 tranche is the one with immediate cash effect. Statutory Sick Pay lost both the Lower Earnings Limit qualifying condition and the three waiting days, so every employee qualifies from the first day of absence regardless of how little they earn. Paternity leave and unpaid parental leave became day-one rights, bereaved partners can access up to 52 weeks of paternity leave, the maximum protective award period for collective redundancy doubled, and whistleblower protection on sexual harassment was strengthened. The Fair Work Agency was established on 7 April 2026. Trade union changes came earlier, on 18 February 2026.
Because of the third-party limb. From that date employers must take all reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment, and become liable for third-party harassment of employees. Third parties are people who are not colleagues, which in a practice means clients. A waiting room full of frightened, hurried and sometimes grieving pet owners, several of whom are unhappy about a bill, is a higher-exposure environment than a back office. Reception staff and nurses take the first wave. What all reasonable steps requires on your facts is a question for an employment lawyer, but it plainly implies acting in advance rather than reacting.
No. That was widely reported and the government's own implementation timeline, updated on 16 July 2026, says otherwise: the unfair dismissal qualifying period is cut to six months from January 2027, alongside uncapped compensatory awards and fire-and-rehire protections. Six months rather than day one, and 2027 rather than 2026. It is still a substantial change from the current two years, because it compresses the window for correcting a hiring mistake into roughly one probation cycle. Practices should plan on written probation objectives and reviews that actually happen on their scheduled dates.
The time limit for bringing a claim extends from three months to six months. In Scotland, breach-of-contract claims follow on 9 November 2026. The practical consequences are about records and about exits. Doubling the window doubles the period in which a departure can come back as a claim, so the documents that would defend one — the notes, the correspondence, the performance record, the reasons given at the time — need to survive at least six months in a usable and findable state. It also raises the value of handling an exit carefully rather than quickly.
The published plan for 2027 includes mandatory gender-equality and menopause action plans, replacing the voluntary versions introduced on 6 April 2026, enhanced dismissal protection for pregnant women and new mothers, guaranteed hours rights and notice-payment protections for zero-hours working, flexible working rights, bereavement leave including pregnancy loss, umbrella company regulation, restrictions on NDAs in harassment and discrimination cases, and changes to the collective redundancy consultation threshold. Guaranteed hours reaches any practice staffing a rota with variable-hours contracts, and umbrella company regulation reaches locum cover booked through an intermediary.
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