April 2025 brought significant changes to employment law. For business owners, employers, and employees alike, staying updated on these changes is essential for ensuring compliance and fostering a fair workplace culture.
Overview of Upcoming Changes
Starting in April 2025, multiple significant changes are set to impact employment laws.
The Government has recently announced a series of significant amendments to the Employment Rights Bill, aimed at strengthening worker protections and ensuring fairer employment practices. These changes, which are set to be considered at the House of Commons report stage, reflect feedback from a series of consultations on zero-hours contracts, agency worker rights, trade union legislation, statutory sick pay, and the regulation of umbrella companies.
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Key Changes and What They Mean For You
Greater Job Security for Agency Workers
A major development is the introduction of a right for agency workers to be offered guaranteed hours by the end user of their services. This move is designed to tackle uncertainty and one-sided flexibility in agency work. The responsibility for offering guaranteed hours will largely fall on the end user but may, in certain cases, be placed on agencies or other relevant bodies through secondary legislation.
Agency workers will also gain stronger protections around shift scheduling. Both the end user and the agency must provide reasonable notice of shifts, cancellations, and changes. Agencies will be required to compensate workers for short-notice cancellations, although they may be able to recover these costs from the hiring company.
These provisions will apply to both new and existing contracts, with transitional arrangements in place for pre-existing agreements.
Stronger Protections for Employees in Redundancy Situations
In a move to improve redundancy protections, the Government has proposed increasing the maximum protective award for failures to conduct collective redundancy consultations from 90 to 180 days. This change strengthens employee rights and holds employers to higher standards of compliance in redundancy processes.
The Government has also committed to further reviewing the collective redundancy framework, including updating the Code of Practice on Dismissal and Re-engagement. This will ensure that new protections, such as the right to claim automatic unfair dismissal in ‘fire and rehire’ scenarios, are effectively integrated into employment law.
Reforms to Trade Union and Industrial Relations Law
A number of amendments have been proposed to modernise trade union and industrial relations law, including:
Strengthening protections against unfair practices during trade union recognition processes.
Removing the requirement for trade unions to ballot members on maintaining a political fund every ten years.
Simplifying the information that must be provided in industrial action ballots and notices, with further consultation on e-balloting.
Extending the validity of a trade union’s mandate for industrial action from six to twelve months, reducing the need for repeated ballots.
Granting trade unions digital access to workplaces for collective bargaining, in addition to existing physical access rights.
Expanding Access to Statutory Sick Pay (SSP)
Under the proposed changes, all employees will become eligible for statutory sick pay (SSP), as the lower earnings limit will be removed. However, to balance affordability for businesses, lower earners will receive either 80% of their average weekly earnings or the statutory SSP rate, whichever is lower. This ensures that more workers have access to financial support when unwell while maintaining sustainability for employers.
Regulation of Umbrella Companies
The Government has also taken steps to regulate the umbrella company market, responding to long-standing concerns about worker exploitation and non-compliance. A new legal framework will be introduced to ensure that workers employed through umbrella companies have the same rights and protections as those directly employed by an agency or business. Further consultations will be conducted to refine the regulatory approach, focusing on improving transparency and accountability in pay arrangements.
What This Means for Employers and Employees
These amendments mark a significant step towards a fairer and more balanced employment landscape. For businesses, these changes introduce new obligations that will require careful review of contracts, redundancy policies, and engagement with agency workers and umbrella companies. For employees, they bring stronger protections and greater security in the workplace.
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Magara Law is an employment law firm with offices in Bicester, Banbury, Reading, and Paddington, London, and serves clients nationwide. 
For more information or to contact our employment law team at Magara Law, call 01869 325 883 or email roy@magaralaw.co.uk.
