Employment rights: what’s changing in 2026?

With the Employment Rights Act 2025 receiving Royal Assent in mid-December and becoming law, there is now more certainty about the changes to employment law being made.

Given the significant number of changes being made, it is helpful that these are being introduced in a number of stages rather than all at once.

Changes to employment legislation and policy typically take place in either April or October. The first set of the changes likely to impact most (non-unionised) organisations are following this pattern and will take place in April 2026. These will include changes to parental rights, statutory sick pay, and an increase in the protective award in large redundancy situations, and protection for sexual harassment disclosures under whistleblowing rules.

For most organisations, the most significant changes will be those related to parental leave and statutory sick pay, which will be explored in detail below.

The current rules provide that statutory sick pay (SSP) is payable only where an employee has been unable to work due to sickness for a minimum of four days, with the first three days being unpaid (or ‘waiting days’). From the fourth day, if the employee earns more than the ‘lower earnings limit’ (at time of writing, currently £125 per week), they would be entitled to receive a weekly amount of statutory sick pay (currently £118.75), for up to 28 weeks.

For most organisations, the most significant changes will be those related to parental leave and statutory sick pay

From Monday 6 April 2026, this will be considerably different. Firstly, the three waiting days are to be removed, so an employee will be entitled to receive a proportion of statutory sick pay from the first day of any period of absence. The lower earnings limit is also to be removed, so all employees will be entitled to receive SSP regardless of how much they earn per week. Perhaps because of this, with no lower earning threshold and the current SSP rate being a flat rate, there will be the inclusion of an additional amount of SSP.

The new rate of SSP will be the lower of the flat rate SSP (expected to increase to from £118.75 to £123.25 per week in April 2026) or 80% of the average weekly earnings of the employee. While this is unlikely to impact any SSP payments for staff who have long periods of absence and earn over the lower earnings limit, it is likely to increase costs for organisations where staff work fewer hours, and are therefore under the lower earnings limit, or those where staff have shorter absence periods of a day or two at a time. If this increases the organisations costs disproportionately, a review of the sickness absence policies or potential absence management trigger points may be beneficial.

The right to paternity leave currently applies to all employees who have more than 26 weeks service at the qualifying week.

For paternity leave following the birth of a child, the qualifying week is the end of the 15th week before the expected week of the baby’s birth; for adoption, this is the week in which an employee is matched with the child. Information on the expected due/placement date is also required to be provided before the qualifying week, and a minimum of 28 days’ notice of the date of the intended start of paternity leave.

From Monday 6 April 2026, there will be no service requirement for an employee to take paternity leave following the birth or adoption of a child, although the notice requirements will remain. There will also be more flexibility around when the paternity leave may be taken, with the restriction of leave being taken within 56 days of the child’s birth/placement being removed.

It is also worth noting that although the entitlement to paternity leave will become a day one right, with no service requirement, this is not (currently) extended to statutory paternity pay. The current right for an employee to take unpaid parental leave, of up to 18 weeks in total (per child), with a maximum of four weeks (per child) each year, is currently only available to employees with more than one years’ service. This service requirement will be removed, and unpaid parental leave will also be a day one right. As this is unpaid, it seems to be something that employees request less frequently, and so it is unlikely to cause significant issues for most organisations.

Further changes will be coming into place throughout the next 18 months, many of these are still subject to further consultation, or regulations to be provided. The next round of changes will become effective from October 2026, with further detail being provided on these at a later stage.