In this podcast series, our employment lawyers break down what the Employment Rights Act 2025 means in practice, cutting through the complexity to give HR professionals, in-house counsel and business leaders the insight they need to prepare.

Each episode focuses on a specific area of reform, exploring the legal detail, the practical implications, and the steps your organisation should be taking now. New episodes will be released as the law continues to develop.

Episode 2: The Employment Rights Act 2025: Union access rights

Trade unions are about to gain a significant new right of access to workplaces - one that could be among the most consequential changes introduced by the Employment Rights Act 2025. In this episode, we walk through the forthcoming statutory right of access, expected to arrive in October 2026, and explore why it fundamentally alters the long-standing position that employers could simply refuse access unless they chose to agree.

What we cover:

• The scope of the right: Who the right applies to, including the 21-worker threshold applied at company level, what counts as a "workplace," and the permitted purposes for access - meeting, supporting, representing, recruiting, and facilitating collective bargaining. We also highlight what is explicitly not permitted, including using the right to organise industrial action.
• Privacy and employer conduct: Why privacy expectations mean employers cannot simply sit in and listen to union activity on their premises.
• The process in practice: The code-led steps from voluntary agreements and potential ACAS support, through to formal access requests, the 15-working-day response deadline, the negotiation window, and when a dispute can be referred to the Central Arbitration Committee (CAC).
• Day-to-day access: What access might look like on the ground, including notice requirements, reasonable workplace instructions, and the growing question of digital access through tools such as Teams or Zoom - along with the limits around significant changes to premises or IT systems.
• Enforcement: CAC complaints, the potential for significant fines, and what employers need to understand about their obligations.
• Three practical tips to help you prepare: Review what you already have in place; get your internal response team and templates ready; and keep a close eye on further regulations as they are published.

For more information, see our legal update on the changes to union access rights.

Episode 1: Employment Rights Act 2025: What the unfair dismissal changes mean for you

The Employment Rights Act 2025 introduces some of the most significant changes to unfair dismissal rights in decades. In this episode, Claire Rosney, Professional Development Lawyer at Browne Jacobson, and Emma Capper, Head of Employment, walk through what is changing, when it takes effect, and what your organisation needs to do now.

What we cover:

• The two core changes: From 1 January 2027, the two-year qualifying period for ordinary unfair dismissal protection will be reduced to six months. Alongside this, the compensatory cap - both the £118,223 financial limit and the 52 weeks' gross pay ceiling - is removed entirely. We look at how these changes came about and why the cap removal in particular caught many by surprise, having been introduced as a late amendment with no prior consultation.
• Why six months looks permanent: The government has removed the power to vary the qualifying period by regulations, meaning any future change requires primary legislation. This makes it considerably harder for future governments to reverse course.
• How the commencement date works in practice: All employees with six months' service on 1 January 2027 will qualify immediately - including anyone recruited from the start of 2026, and anyone starting from the end of June this year.
• The statutory notice trap: Employers who dismiss an employee in the final week of their first six months may find that employee already has qualifying service. Statutory notice - whether worked or paid in lieu - is added to the dismissal date, extending the effective date of termination and potentially bringing the employee within protection.
• Impact on senior executive exits: Without a cap, Employment Tribunals become a genuinely attractive forum for highly paid employees for the first time. Successful claimants can recover compensation for pension loss, share schemes, long-term incentive plans, and bonuses - making exits that were once relatively straightforward significantly more complex and costly.
• What to do now: Emma and Claire set out the practical steps organisations should be taking ahead of January 2027, including reviewing probationary period lengths (three to four months is likely more appropriate than the current norm of six), tightening pre-employment screening, training line managers on conducting effective probation reviews, and ensuring any process that could lead to dismissal is supported by a robust, contemporaneous evidence trail.
• The board-level consideration: Boards should be actively thinking now about how they manage executive recruitment and underperformance. The landscape for senior exits is about to shift fundamentally.

Key takeaway: All organisations should start taking steps to prepare for this change now.

For more information, see our legal update on the changes to unfair dismissal.