Employment Law Reforms 2025
26 March 2025
There is a huge amount of new employment law that is progressing through parliament as the Employment Rights Bill 2025. Aspects included in the Bill include;
- Enhanced rights for zero hours workers (which it has now been confirmed will include agency workers)
- Right to guaranteed hours
- Right to reasonable notice of shift
- Right to payment for cancelled, moved and curtailed shifts
- Changes to process for consideration of flexible working requests
- New right to SSP from day one of sickness
- Changes to parental and paternity leave qualifying periods
- Requirement to risk assess to protect employees from harassment
- Unfair dismissal – removal of qualifying period Requirement re keeping records on annual leave
- Extension of the regulation of employment businesses
Once the Employment Rights Bill completes its passage through parliament, it will become the Employment Rights Act. Then there will be a process where Regulations are written to enact the provisions of the Act and how they will operate.
We will provide you with regular updates on our website as each measure is scheduled for introduction by which time we will know the detail of how the measures will be dealt with, the relevant timescale and what effect that will have.
One items that does come into effect from April 2025 is the new right to neonatal leave and pay. See information on that below. We don’t consider that this requires any contractual changes but should be referenced with other statutory rights in your employee handbook.
Neonatal Leave and Pay
The new rights in regard to neonatal leave and pay commence on 6 April 2025. The relevant legislation is the Statutory Neonatal Care Pay (Admin) Regulations 2025.
Parents have a right to up to 12 weeks’ paid leave (Statutory Neonatal Care Pay (“SNCP”)) when their baby requires neonatal care under the supervision of a hospital consultant. This is a day one right and so, in theory, an employee could claim this as soon as they join you. Neonatal care must have begun or taken place within the first 28 days following birth and continue for at least 7 consecutive days. A parent is entitled to one week of leave for each week of neonatal care up to a maximum of 12 weeks. The leave can be tagged on to the end of other family leave such as maternity or paternity leave.
If the parent is entitled to Statutory Sick Pay in respect of the same period, there is no liability to pay SNCP.
The amount of SNCP is the lower of;
(a) £187.18; and
(b) 90% of the normal weekly earnings of the person claiming SNCP
Consultation outcomes
Also, we have seen publication of the outcomes of consultation on the application of zero hours contracts updates to agency workers and tackling non-compliance in umbrella companies which has decided that liability for the administration of PAYE will fall to the entity which makes the labour supply to the end hirer (typically the agency where there is one in the supply chain).
See our news articles here;
Again, we will provide regular updates on our website as draft legislation is published.
If you want to discuss any aspect, please do give us a call.