Employment Law Changes Landing This Month: What Bury Employers Need to Know
Updated: Oct 24
A Lot Changes This Month
Several strands of the Employment Rights Act 2025 take effect in October 2026, and employers across Bury and Greater Manchester have a genuinely short window to get ready. One change is already in force; the rest land on 30 October, just two days after the Autumn Budget.
Here's a plain-English run-through of what's changing and what it means for your business.
Tribunal Time Limits Have Already Doubled
Since 1 October 2026, employees bringing most employment tribunal claims have six months to do so, instead of three. This covers claims such as unfair dismissal, discrimination and unlawful deduction from wages.
In practice, this means:
Grievances and disputes can resurface much later than you might expect.
Records of disciplinary processes, performance conversations and dismissals need to be kept for longer and in better order.
There's less room to assume a quiet departure is the end of the matter.
A Tougher Duty to Prevent Sexual Harassment
From 30 October 2026, the existing duty to take "reasonable steps" to prevent sexual harassment becomes a duty to take "all reasonable steps" — a noticeably higher bar.
Generic policies and a one-off training session are unlikely to be enough on their own. To show you've met the duty, you'll want to be able to point to:
A harassment risk assessment specific to your business and sector.
Policies, complaint procedures and reporting routes that staff actually know about.
Training that's been delivered, and refreshed, not just filed away.
A record of how complaints have been handled and reviewed.
Harassment by Customers, Clients and Contractors
Also from 30 October, employers become liable for harassment of their staff by third parties — customers, clients, patients, contractors, suppliers or members of the public encountered through work — where they haven't taken all reasonable steps to prevent it. Unlike the sexual harassment duty, this covers harassment linked to any protected characteristic, and a single incident can be enough to trigger liability.
This matters particularly for client-facing roles: retail and hospitality staff, trades visiting customers' homes, and anyone dealing with the public. Worth reviewing:
Contract terms and customer-facing communications that set expectations on behaviour.
How staff are trained to report incidents involving a customer or third party.
What managers are expected to do when something is raised.
Trade Union Changes Also Land on 30 October
The same date brings a new statutory right for trade unions to request access to workplaces, backed by fines of up to £500,000 for repeated breaches, plus expanded time-off and facilities rights for union and equality representatives. A separate duty to tell staff about their right to join a union, originally expected around now, has been pushed back to January 2027 — so there's a little more breathing room on that one specifically.
What We'd Suggest Doing Now
With around three weeks until the harassment and trade union changes land, a sensible to-do list looks like:
Dust off, or write, a harassment risk assessment and policy, dated and specific to your business.
Book in refresher training rather than relying on something delivered years ago.
Check your record-keeping for complaints, disciplinary processes and training delivery — both for the new tribunal time limits and to evidence the "all reasonable steps" duty.
Review contracts and communications with regular third parties for harassment expectations.
If you have 21 or more employees, read up on the union access request process so a request doesn't catch you out.
Employment law isn't our specialism at Jackson Lee Accountants, but it touches a lot of what we do with payroll, contracts and the records HMRC and tribunals both expect to see. If any of this affects your payroll setup, or you're not sure where your current policies stand, get in touch — and for the detail of the legal duties themselves, it's worth a conversation with an employment solicitor alongside us.
Need a hand with this? We're accountants in Bury, and our payroll and auto-enrolment service covers it for a fixed fee.
Talk it through with us
If this affects you, book a free, no-obligation 30-minute chat by phone, Teams or at our Bury office, or see your fixed fee online in 2 minutes. Prefer to talk now? Call 0161 327 0047.
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