Employment Rights Act 2025 changes from 6 April 2026

Some of the key statutory rights reforms under the Employment Rights Act 2025 (ERA 2025) aimed at making workplaces more family-friendly and accessible will come into effect from 6 April 2026. Below, we summarise the changes to statutory sick pay (SSP), paternity leave, unpaid parental leave and bereaved partner’s paternity leave. The Government has also recently announced that the new duty on employers to keep records of annual leave and pay will come into force on 6 April 2026. 

Changes to SSP

Under the current regime, SSP is only payable to employees from the fourth qualifying day of sickness absence, following the three-day ‘waiting period’, and where an employee’s average weekly earnings meet or exceed the lower earnings limit (currently £125 per week, increasing to £129 from 6 April 2026). 

From 6 April, the following reforms to SSP will take effect:

• removal of the three-day ‘waiting period’, meaning that SSP will be payable from the first day of sickness absence; and
• removal of the lower earnings limit as a condition of SSP eligibility (with employees receiving the lower of the flat rate or 80% of average weekly earnings). 

The reforms will increase the number of employees entitled to receive SSP and are likely to have the greatest impact on workplaces which do not offer contractual sick pay for some or all of their employees and those with greater numbers of lower-paid workers. These employers are likely to see increases to budgets and potentially higher rates of short-term absences needing careful management and planning. We expect sectors such as retail, hospitality, leisure and healthcare to be particularly affected.

The Government has published guidance on transitional arrangements, including how SSP should be handled where sickness absence began before 6 April 2026 but continues beyond that date.  

Duty to keep records of annual leave and pay

When commencement regulations for 6 April 2026 were published in March, a surprise addition to the changes listed above was the bringing into force of the new requirement to keep holiday entitlement and pay records. 

Many employers will already be keeping such records as a matter of good practice. However, from 6 April 2026 employers will be under a duty to do so. There is no current guidance on what such records should look like, only that they are in such format that the employer “reasonably thinks fit”. However, they should include details of (i) the amount of leave taken; (ii) payments in lieu of untaken holiday; and (iii) how holiday pay was calculated. This also includes keeping records of holiday entitlement for irregular hours and part year workers. Records should be retained for 6 years.

Failure to comply with the duty to keep records will be a criminal offence punishable by a fine and the new Fair Work Agency will have enforcement powers in relation to the failure to keep records going back to 6 April 2026. 

Changes to family leave

From 6 April 2026, both paternity leave and parental leave (of up to 18 weeks of unpaid leave in total for each child up until they reach the age of 18) will become a day one right removing the current requirement for qualifying periods of 26 weeks and one year respectively. This will extend the right to such leave to tens of thousands more employees. 

The new day one entitlement to paternity leave is for unpaid leave only and does not affect statutory paternity pay which will still require the employee to have 26 weeks’ continuous employment by the end of the 15th week before the expected week of childbirth to be eligible. 

In addition, whereas historically, employees taking both paternity leave and shared parental leave had to structure their leave so that paternity leave was taken before shared parental leave or face forfeiting their right to paternity leave, the changes on 6 April 2026 will do away with this anomaly, allowing employees to take paternity leave and pay after shared parental leave. 

New bereaved partner’s paternity leave

While not part of the changes under the ERA 2025, the Bereaved Partner's Paternity Leave Regulations 2026 will also take effect on 6 April 2026 as part of wider reforms to family leave rights. 

These regulations introduce a new, day one right for employees to take up to 52 weeks of unpaid leave in situations where their child’s primary carer dies within a year of birth or adoption. The leave must be taken within the first year of a child’s birth or adoption.

The circumstances giving rise to such leave are fortunately very rare and the regulations will introduce valuable leave for bereaved parents. They will operate alongside existing statutory bereavement leave rights. 

Acas has published Bereaved partner's paternity leave guidance to help employers. 

What should employers be doing? 

• review or create annual leave and pay record keeping processes; 
• check data retention policies and privacy notices and update where necessary to take account of the new requirement to retain annual leave records for six years;
• update sickness absence policies and employment contracts to reflect the new SSP entitlement, ensure payroll systems will accommodate payments and consider communicating changes to affected staff; and
• update contracts of employment and family friendly policies to reflect changes to paternity leave and parental leave, review any enhanced paternity leave or parental leave schemes and make managers aware of the new day one rights.

In addition to the changes proposed under the ERA 2025, the Government is also undertaking a review of the framework around parental leave and pay. The Government‘s recent call for evidence closed in late August 2025 and responses are now being reviewed with a final report and potential reform proposals expected around in late 2026 or early 2027. There are likely to be more changes to come. 

This article has focussed on the April changes to statutory rights. Additional ERA related changes are due to come into effect in April simplifying the process for trade unions to obtain statutory recognition, increasing the protective award for a breach of the obligations to collectively consult from 90 to 180 days pay, in addition to sexual harassment becoming a qualifying disclosure for the purpose of whistleblowing. 

If you would like to discuss any of these changes, please get in touch with us via your usual CMS contact or a member of the Employment team. To keep up to date with ERA  developments visit our Employment Rights Act tracker.