The Employment Rights Act 2025 received Royal Assent on 18 December 2025, and it represents the most significant change to UK employment law in a generation. For employers who rely on zero-hours and low-hours staffing, it will reshape how casual work is scheduled, offered and paid for.
It is worth being precise about where things currently stand, because a good deal of published commentary is not. The zero-hours provisions are not yet in force. The Act sets out the framework, but the operative detail sits in supplementary regulations that have not been made. The government has confirmed it intends to bring the new regime into force in 2027, and no specific date has been set.
That does not mean there is nothing to do. It means the work available to you now is preparation and influence rather than compliance, and there is one immediate deadline worth knowing about.
The consultation closes on 25 August 2026
On 2 June 2026 the government launched a consultation titled Make Work Pay: ending one-sided flexibility: reforms of zero hours and similar contracts. It sets out the government’s preferred positions on the questions the Act left open, and invites employers to respond.
It closes on 25 August 2026.
If your organisation has a material zero-hours workforce, this is the last opportunity to shape how the thresholds and reference periods are set before regulations are drafted. The government estimates the reforms will affect more than 18 million people, and the detail being decided now will determine how much administrative burden lands on employers in your sector.
What the Act actually does
The government’s manifesto commitment was to ban “exploitative” zero-hours contracts. The Act stops well short of an outright ban. Instead it targets what ministers describe as “one-sided flexibility” through three rights.
1. The right to a guaranteed hours offer
Qualifying zero-hours and low-hours workers will have the right to be offered a contract reflecting the hours they have regularly worked across a reference period.
Three points matter here.
It is a positive obligation on the employer. This is a right to receive an offer, not merely a right to request one. The employer must proactively make the offer to workers who qualify.
The worker can decline. Someone who genuinely values the flexibility of casual work can turn the offer down and remain on their existing arrangement.
It extends to agency workers. Under the Act, the hirer is generally responsible for making the offer to qualifying agency workers, not the agency. The consultation raises the possibility that in certain circumstances the agency might be responsible instead, and asks whether agencies that already guarantee hours above the threshold should be excluded.
2. Reasonable notice of shifts
Employers will be required to give reasonable notice before scheduling a shift, and before changing the timing of an existing one, including changes to start and end times.
The right is expected to cover workers on zero and low-hours contracts, workers with no set working pattern, and workers offered shifts outside their normal pattern.
3. Payment for shifts cancelled, curtailed or moved at short notice
Where an employer cancels a shift, cuts it short or moves it without reasonable notice, the worker will be entitled to proportionate compensation.
This is the change with the most immediate operational consequence for hospitality, retail and care providers. Sending staff home early on a quiet afternoon currently costs nothing beyond the unworked hours. Under the new regime it will carry a defined financial cost.
Workers will also have specific protection against detriment or dismissal connected to these rights.
What is settled, and what is still open
This distinction is the most useful thing an employer can hold onto right now, and it is where most published guidance is weakest.
| Question | Status |
| Zero-hours contracts banned outright | No. Not banned. |
| Right to a guaranteed hours offer exists | Settled in the Act |
| Right to reasonable notice exists | Settled in the Act |
| Right to payment for short-notice cancellation exists | Settled in the Act |
| Hirer responsible for agency worker offers | Settled in principle, detail under consultation |
| Length of the initial reference period | Open. Government prefers 12 weeks |
| Length of subsequent reference periods | Open. May be longer than the initial period |
| What counts as “reasonable notice” | Open. Options consulted on range from one to four weeks |
| Low-hours threshold for qualification | Open. Options from 8 to 48 hours a week, preference 8 to 20 |
| Amount of cancellation compensation | Open. To be set in regulations |
| Commencement date | Open. Expected 2027 |
Anyone telling you the reference period is definitively 12 weeks, or that reasonable notice means a specific number of days, is describing a preference as though it were law.
The limited-term contract exemption
Employers will not be required to make a guaranteed hours offer where a worker is engaged on a limited-term contract shorter than the reference period, provided the limited term is reasonable.
The Act treats a limited term as reasonable where the worker is needed for a specific task or until a particular event occurs. The consultation asks whether this is sufficient for employers with genuinely seasonal demand, or whether further circumstances should be recognised. If you run a seasonal operation, this is the question in the consultation most worth responding to.
A practical checklist for HR
Four steps, in order of value.
1. Audit your shift data now. Pull twelve weeks of actual worked hours for every zero-hours and low-hours worker. You are looking for people whose real pattern is materially more regular than their contract implies. This is worth doing regardless of where the thresholds land, because the data takes time to assemble and you cannot model your exposure without it.
2. Model your exposure across the range, not to a single figure. Because the low-hours threshold is unsettled, run the numbers at 8 hours, at 20 hours and at 48 hours a week. The gap between those scenarios is your planning uncertainty, and for some employers it is the difference between a handful of guaranteed hours offers and several hundred.
3. Cost your cancellation practice. Look at how often you cancel, curtail or move shifts at short notice, and what a compensation obligation would have cost over the last quarter. For many hospitality and retail operators this is the single largest financial consequence of the reforms, and it is entirely invisible in current management accounts.
4. Brief your line managers before you rewrite anything. The behaviour that creates liability under this regime happens at shift level: a duty manager sending two people home at 3pm. Contract templates can wait for the regulations. Manager awareness cannot, because the habits being formed now are the ones that will need to change.
What not to do yet
Do not rewrite contracts to a 12-week reference period. It may not be 12 weeks, and rewriting twice costs more than waiting once.
Do not restructure your workforce to avoid the thresholds before you know what they are. Restructuring against a preference that shifts by regulation is expensive, and moves made to sidestep the rights may attract scrutiny.
Do not assume the reforms make casual staffing unworkable. They make one-sided flexibility costly. Genuinely fluctuating demand remains a legitimate reason to engage casual workers, and the right to refuse a guaranteed hours offer means workers who value flexibility keep it.
Where this is heading
The direction of travel is clear even if the detail is not. Employers who currently treat scheduling agility as free will find it has a price. Those who already schedule with reasonable notice and rarely cancel at short notice will find the transition largely administrative.
The most useful thing you can do between now and 2027 is know your own numbers. When the regulations arrive, the employers who struggle will be the ones discovering their exposure for the first time.
Sources and further reading
- Employment Rights Act 2025 (Royal Assent 18 December 2025)
- HM Government, Make Work Pay: ending one-sided flexibility: reforms of zero hours and similar contracts, consultation opened 2 June 2026, closing 25 August 2026
