Guide · Dated change
What changes in October 2026
Two separate dates, routinely reported as one. Employment tribunal time limits doubled on 1 October 2026. The harassment duties and the trade union measures take effect on 30 October 2026. This guide sets out what each one changes, who it affects, and what it does not change at all.
What changes for employees in October 2026?
Short answer Two changes, on two separate dates.
Two different things on two different dates, which is why most coverage gets it wrong. On 1 October 2026 the time limit for most tribunal claims rises from three months to six, where the relevant date falls on or after that day. On 30 October 2026 the duty to prevent sexual harassment rises from taking reasonable steps to taking all reasonable steps, third-party harassment liability arrives, and new trade union duties take effect.
Key rule
The six months less one day limit applies only where the relevant date falls on or after 1 October 2026: for an unfair dismissal the effective date of termination, and for most other claims the act or failure to act complained of. Where a claim rests on a series of acts, the extended limit applies only if the last of those acts falls on or after that date. Claims arising wholly before 1 October 2026 remain subject to the three-month limit. Separately, and already in force, the maximum ACAS Early Conciliation period is twelve weeks rather than six for notifications presented on or after 1 December 2025.
Source: Employment Rights Act 2025, s.152 and Sch.12, in force 1 October 2026 under SI 2026/954 (regulation 4); Employment Tribunal (Extension of Time Limits) (Miscellaneous Amendments and Transitional Provisions) Regulations 2026, SI 2026/758; Employment Tribunals Extension of Jurisdiction (England and Wales) (Amendment) Order 2026, SI 2026/759; Employment Tribunals (Early Conciliation: Exemptions and Rules of Procedure) (Amendment) Regulations 2025, SI 2025/1153
Practical guidance: Breach of contract claims in Scotland follow on 9 November 2026. Nothing in this wave changes what makes a dismissal unfair, which remains governed by the ACAS Code of Practice on disciplinary and grievance procedures (2015)
At a glance
The dates, in order
- 25 August 2026
Electronic and workplace balloting becomes available for statutory trade union ballots, where the employer and union agree.
- 1 October 2026
Time limits for bringing most employment tribunal claims increased from three months to six. This is the change that affects the largest number of individual people.
- 30 October 2026
Employers must take all reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment of their workers, and become liable for harassment by third parties unless they took all reasonable steps to prevent it.
- 30 October 2026
Trade union measures: a duty to inform workers of the right to join a union, updated access rules, and new rights for union representatives and equality representatives.
- 9 November 2026
The time limit change reaches breach of contract claims in Scotland.
- 1 December 2026
New seafarer regulations covering health and safety, pay, job security and rest breaks.
Verified against ACAS guidance on the Employment Rights Act 2025, last updated 19 August 2026, and the government implementation timeline. How several of these measures work in detail remains subject to consultation. Check the position at the date you rely on it.
October 2026
Tribunal time limits have doubled
On 1 October 2026 the time limit for bringing most employment tribunal claims rose from three months to six. For anyone who has ever watched a good claim die because an internal appeal took seven weeks, this is the most consequential individual change in the entire Act. The three-month rule was, without much competition, the most destructive provision in the system, and it caught people every week who had done everything else right.
The detail that matters is the transition, which regulation 4 of SI 2026/954 fixes. The extended limit applies where the relevant date, usually the dismissal or the act complained of, falls on or after 1 October 2026. If your relevant date is earlier, the existing limit governs, whatever date you present your claim. Nobody should be relying on a transitional provision to save a claim that could have been notified in time.
That has a practical consequence for the next few weeks. Someone whose employment ended on 30 September 2026 is still on the three-month clock, even if they act today, and the last of those deadlines falls on 29 December 2026, before any adjustment for Early Conciliation. It is the relevant date that decides which clock applies, not the date you decide to act.
| Before 1 October 2026 | On and after 1 October 2026 | |
|---|---|---|
| Limit for most claims | Three months, usually expressed as three months less one day. | Six months, usually expressed as six months less one day. |
| What starts the clock | The relevant date, commonly the effective date of termination. | Unchanged. |
| Effect of an internal appeal | None. The clock keeps running. | Still none. This does not change. |
| Effect of notifying ACAS | Pauses the clock through Early Conciliation. Since 1 December 2025 that conciliation period can run up to twelve weeks, not six. | The pause itself is unchanged by the October reform, and it is still the step that protects you. |
| Breach of contract in the tribunal, England and Wales | Three months. | Six months where the effective date of termination is on or after 1 October 2026. |
| Breach of contract in Scotland | Three months. | Six months from 9 November 2026. |
Which date starts the clock
The relevant date is not the same for every claim, and it decides which limit you are on. These are the ones that arise most often in dismissal and disciplinary work.
| Claim | The relevant date |
|---|---|
| Unfair dismissal and constructive dismissal | The effective date of termination. For a constructive dismissal that is the date your resignation takes effect. |
| Discrimination at work, Equality Act 2010 | The date of the act. Where the conduct extends over a period, the end of that period. Where the complaint is a failure to do something, the date the person decided on it. |
| Unauthorised deduction from wages | The date of the payment from which the deduction was made. Where there is a series of deductions, the last in the series. |
| Failure to allow you to be accompanied at a disciplinary or grievance hearing | The date of the failure or threat. |
| Breach of contract in the tribunal, England and Wales | The effective date of termination of the contract. |
| Other claims within Schedule 12 | The date of the act, conduct or failure complained of. Where there is a series of similar acts or failures, the last one in the series. |
Employment Rights Act 2025, section 152 and Schedule 12, brought into force on 1 October 2026 by the Employment Rights Act 2025 (Commencement No. 5 and Transitional Provisions) (Amendment) Regulations 2026, SI 2026/954, with the transitional rule at regulation 4 and the relevant dates in the Schedule to that instrument. Complaints under seven further instruments, among them the part-time worker, fixed-term employee and blacklisting regulations, are covered by the Employment Tribunal (Extension of Time Limits) (Miscellaneous Amendments and Transitional Provisions) Regulations 2026, SI 2026/758. Breach of contract claims in the tribunal in England and Wales are covered by the Employment Tribunals Extension of Jurisdiction (England and Wales) (Amendment) Order 2026, SI 2026/759, which keys to the effective date of termination. Verified against legislation.gov.uk on 2 October 2026.
The other change to the clock, which arrived earlier
One thing on that table is worth separating out, because it did not come from the October reform and a good deal of published guidance has not caught up with it. The Early Conciliation period itself doubled. Since 1 December 2025 ACAS has had up to twelve weeks to conciliate rather than six, and because notifying ACAS pauses the tribunal clock, the pause available before a claim has to be lodged is potentially twice what it used to be.
Two details decide whether it applies to you. It is the date you notified ACAS that governs, not the date of the dismissal or the act complained of, and not the date you are reading this. And it runs from notifications made on or after 1 December 2025, so anyone who notified before that date stays on the six-week period. Twelve weeks is also a maximum, not a fixed term. ACAS can issue the certificate sooner, and will do so as soon as conciliation is over, whether it succeeded or not.
The practical warning is the same one that applies to the October change, only sharper. A longer pause is more room to negotiate properly, and it is more room to lose track of a date. Two moving limits now interact: which conciliation period applies turns on when you notified ACAS, while which tribunal limit applies turns on your relevant date. They are different questions with different answers, and working from the wrong one is a silent error that only surfaces when it is too late to fix.
The conciliation period is set by the Employment Tribunals (Early Conciliation: Exemptions and Rules of Procedure) (Amendment) Regulations 2025, SI 2025/1153, which substituted twelve weeks for six in rule 6(1) of the Schedule to the 2014 Regulations and came into force on 1 December 2025, with a transitional provision at regulation 3. The instrument extends to England, Wales and Scotland. Verified against legislation.gov.uk. The government indicated it would review the change; confirm the position at the date you rely on it.
October 2026
The harassment duties on 30 October
Two changes land together. First, the preventative duty tightens: employers move from taking reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment of their workers to taking all reasonable steps. One word, and a meaningful shift in what an employer has to be able to evidence. Second, employers become liable for harassment of their workers by third parties, such as customers or clients, unless they have taken all reasonable steps to prevent it.
The government is expected to specify in future regulations what counts as reasonable, so anyone offering a definitive checklist today is guessing. The direction is already clear enough to act on. A policy that exists but is not communicated, training delivered once at induction and never refreshed, reporting routes that lead to the person complained of, and reports that are received but never followed up, were all weak positions before. Against an all reasonable steps standard they are considerably weaker.
A hospitality worker reports repeated sexual comments from a regular customer. The employer’s response is that customers cannot be controlled and that this is part of front-of-house work.
What changes on 30 October 2026. That answer stops being available as a default. Liability attaches for third-party harassment unless the employer took all reasonable steps to prevent it, which turns the question into what they actually did: whether there was a policy covering customer conduct, whether staff knew how to report, whether earlier reports were acted on, and whether anything was done about this customer specifically.
How Zhan Associates helps
These matters usually arrive tangled: a harassment complaint, a grievance that was mishandled, and sometimes a disciplinary running in the opposite direction. We treat that as one case rather than three, because the connections between them are usually where the strength is.
- Grievance framing and drafting. We help you put the grievance in writing, though we do not attend the hearing that follows. See raising a grievance for how to put this in writing.
- Equality Act overlay. Where a protected characteristic is engaged, the Complex Case overlay handles overlapping grounds.
- Conciliation and tribunal. ACAS Early Conciliation and ET1 drafting where the matter proceeds.
October 2026
What October does not change
Nothing about how a fair disciplinary is run. The ACAS Code of Practice on disciplinary and grievance procedures continues to set the standard for investigation, notification, the hearing itself, accompaniment and appeal, and the adjustment of up to twenty five per cent for unreasonable failure to comply with it is unaffected. If you are facing a hearing in November, the rules governing that hearing are the same rules that governed it in September.
Two further points worth correcting, because both circulate widely. The Fair Work Agency, established in April 2026, brings together enforcement of matters such as holiday pay and statutory sick pay. It does not enforce disciplinary fairness, which remains a matter for the employment tribunal. And the new duty on employers to inform workers of their right to join a trade union does not alter your right to be accompanied, which has never depended on union membership and never carried a qualifying period.
The larger change is three months later: what changes in January 2027 →
Free tools
Check which limit applies to you
The relevant date decides which limit applies, and Early Conciliation moves the last day. The readiness check works out both from your own dates, then checks the rest of what a claim needs.
Tribunal Claim Readiness Check
Which time limit applies, adjusted for ACAS Early Conciliation; whether you have the qualifying service ordinary unfair dismissal needs either side of 1 January 2027; the claims in view; and the documents in hand.
Check readinessFree, with nothing to sign up for. It runs entirely in your browser: nothing you enter is sent to us or stored on any server. It gives general information measured against the ACAS Code of Practice dated 11 March 2015, which is the version in force, and the statute it names. It does not assess your case or predict any outcome.
Common questions
October 2026 questions people ask
The time limit for bringing most employment tribunal claims rises from three months to six. That happened on 1 October 2026 and it is the change that affects the largest number of individual people.
Not automatically. The extended limit applies where the relevant date, usually the dismissal or the act complained of, falls on or after 1 October 2026. If your relevant date is earlier, plan on the three-month limit and do not gamble on the transitional provisions.
That formulation applies where the relevant date falls before 1 October 2026. On or after that date the equivalent period is six months less one day. The safe practice is unchanged either way: work backwards from the earliest arguable date and notify ACAS early rather than counting to the edge.
No, and treating it that way is a mistake. Evidence degrades, witnesses leave, memories move, and the internal process runs to its own timetable. A longer deadline changes when a claim becomes impossible, not when it becomes wise.
Because two different sets of changes land in the same month. The tribunal time limit changes on 1 October 2026. The harassment duties and the trade union measures take effect on 30 October 2026. They are routinely reported together as "October changes", which is how people end up planning against the wrong date.
Employers move from taking reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment to taking all reasonable steps. Separately, employers become liable for harassment of their workers by third parties, such as customers or clients, unless they have taken all reasonable steps to prevent it.
The detail is expected to be specified in future regulations, so anyone giving you a definitive list today is guessing. What is already clear is the direction: a policy sitting unread on an intranet has never been enough, and the higher threshold makes gaps in training, reporting routes and follow-up easier to expose.
It can be significant if you work in a customer-facing role and your employer has treated abuse from customers as part of the job. From 30 October 2026 that position is much harder to sustain, because liability attaches unless the employer took all reasonable steps to prevent it.
Indirectly. From 30 October 2026 employers have a new duty to inform workers of their right to join a trade union, alongside updated access rules and new rights for union representatives. It raises the general visibility of representation, but it changes nothing about your own right to be accompanied, which has never depended on union membership.
No. The ACAS Code of Practice on disciplinary and grievance procedures continues to govern how a fair process is run, and the Fair Work Agency established in April 2026 does not enforce disciplinary fairness, which remains a tribunal matter. What changes in October is how long you have to bring a claim, not what makes a dismissal unfair.
What commonly goes wrong
- Reading 1 October and 30 October as one set of changes. They are two dates carrying two different sets of obligations, and planning against the wrong one is how a deadline gets missed.
- Describing the duty to prevent sexual harassment as new. It has been in force since 26 October 2024. What changes on 30 October 2026 is the standard, from reasonable steps to all reasonable steps, together with third-party harassment liability.
- Assuming the six-month limit applies because the claim is brought after October. The test is the relevant date of the act complained of.
- Treating a longer limit as a reason to take longer. Evidence degrades, witnesses leave, and a longer deadline changes when a claim becomes impossible, not when it becomes wise.
- Overlooking that the Early Conciliation window is now up to twelve weeks, which changes the arithmetic on when a claim must actually be presented.
- Expecting the Fair Work Agency to enforce disciplinary fairness. It does not. That remains a tribunal matter.
Primary sources
- Employment Rights Act 2025, section 152 and Schedule 12, in force 1 October 2026 under SI 2026/954 (regulation 4 and the Schedule fix the relevant date), via legislation.gov.uk
- Employment Tribunal (Extension of Time Limits) (Miscellaneous Amendments and Transitional Provisions) Regulations 2026, SI 2026/758, via legislation.gov.uk
- Employment Tribunals Extension of Jurisdiction (England and Wales) (Amendment) Order 2026, SI 2026/759, via legislation.gov.uk
- Employment Tribunals (Early Conciliation: Exemptions and Rules of Procedure) (Amendment) Regulations 2025, SI 2025/1153, via legislation.gov.uk
- Worker Protection (Amendment of Equality Act 2010) Act 2023, via legislation.gov.uk
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