Get your climbing wall ready for the Employment Rights Act 2025

The first stage of the implementation of the Employment Rights Act 2025 is coming into force from 6th April, bringing a significant raft of changes to many aspects of employment. At the ABC, we’ve been looking at how this could affect our member climbing walls.

Here’s a reminder of some of the key changes that could affect you and your teams:

1. Day one rights to paternity leave and parental leave. Currently paternity leave rights only apply after 26 weeks, and ordinary or unpaid parental leave only becomes a right after 52 weeks in employment.
2. New statutory right to bereaved partners’ paternity leave
3. Statutory sick pay will be paid from the first day of illness, instead of the fourth, and the lower earnings limit will be removed.
4. Collective redundancy protections are increased with the maximum protective reward for failing to consult in collective redundancy doubling from 90 to 180 days’ pay.
5. Sexual harassment will become a ‘qualifying disclosure’ giving protection to whistleblowers.
6. Gender pay gap and menopause action plans become voluntary on 6th April but will become mandatory during 2027.

What you should do next

1. Review the Guide to Employment Law Changes in the ABC Members Portal for more detail and compare against your own policies, procedures and pay budgets.
2. ABC Members get totally free and confidential HR advice from our partners WorkNest. You can contact their solicitors via the hotline in the members’ portal for 1:1 advice.
3. Join Worknest for their upcoming webinar, “Employment Rights Act 2025 – your questions answered”, on 16th April 2pm.