From the end of October, a trade union will be able to request physical or digital access to a workforce, subject to what the guidance describes as very narrow exceptions.
The part employers keep missing is that this is not limited to unionised workplaces. It applies to employers outside traditionally unionised environments as well.
A firm that has never had a union approach it, has no recognition agreement and no history of collective bargaining is still in scope.
What the Access Right Actually Is
The government has finalised its statutory Code of Practice on trade union rights of access, with secondary legislation bringing forward the detailed mechanics.
The right is to request access, not to take it. That distinction matters, because it means the operative question for an employer is not whether a union can turn up unannounced but how a request is handled, on what timescale, by whom, and on what grounds it could be refused.
Digital access is the genuinely new part. Physical access to a site is a familiar concept even where it has been resisted; access to a workforce through internal digital channels is not, and most employers have no policy that anticipates it. For a distributed or largely remote workforce, digital access may be the only meaningful form.
Because the exceptions are narrow, the practical planning assumption is that a request will succeed. Building a process on the expectation of refusing looks like the wrong preparation.
A Statement for Every New Starter
Alongside the access right sits a duty to inform workers of their trade union rights. In practice, employers must give new starters a statement informing them of their right to join a trade union.
This is administratively small and culturally significant. Adding a paragraph to an onboarding pack costs almost nothing. Doing it for every new hire, in every business, changes the default level of awareness across the labour market in a way that no campaign would.
The exact requirements are still awaiting government confirmation, which is an awkward place to be with an end-of-October date approaching. Employers can prepare the mechanism, identifying where in onboarding the statement will sit and who owns it, without yet knowing the final wording.
Tribunal Claims Get Twice as Long
Separately, from 1 October the deadline for bringing most employment tribunal claims rises from three months to six. Scotland follows in November.
Doubling a limitation period sounds procedural and is not. Three months is short enough that a significant number of potential claims simply expire, often while the person is still deciding whether to bring one, still in a grievance process, or still looking for work.
Six months removes much of that attrition. More disputes will reach a tribunal that would previously have lapsed, and the change will bite hardest on cases where the employee took time to understand what had happened to them, which is disproportionately the more serious ones.
It also changes record-keeping. An employer confident that a dispute had gone away after three months now has to hold that view for six, and the evidence to support it needs to survive that long in a retrievable form. Notes of meetings, decision rationales and contemporaneous emails matter more when the window to challenge them is twice as wide.
Holiday Pay Is the Quiet Exposure
Two of the dated items combine into something larger than either looks alone.
Obligations to keep records relating to holiday pay compliance have applied since 6 April 2026. Fair Work Agency powers to enforce holiday pay compliance arrive in 2027. Between those two dates sits a period in which the duty exists and the enforcement does not.
Now add the tribunal change. From 1 October a worker has six months rather than three to bring a claim, and holiday pay is among the most common subjects of them, because it is arithmetic rather than judgement: either the calculation was right or it was not.
So an employer with historic miscalculations faces a widening claim window from October and a new enforcement body from 2027, while holding records that now document the position either way. Record-keeping duties cut both directions, and the same file that proves compliance proves its absence.
The advice being given is to audit and remedy inaccuracies now, on the basis that voluntary correction before enforcement begins reduces exposure. That is worth taking seriously precisely because the enforcement gap makes it feel unnecessary. Nothing forces the audit in 2026, which is exactly why it will not happen in most firms until something does.
Holiday pay is also the item most likely to be wrong without anyone intending it. Variable hours, commission, overtime and irregular patterns each complicate the calculation, and the rules have shifted repeatedly over the past decade. A firm can be confident it pays people properly and still be carrying an error in the formula it inherited.
Harassment Duties Change on the Same Day
The end-of-October date also brings changes to the harassment framework, including an enhanced duty regarding sexual harassment prevention and third-party harassment liability.
Third-party liability is the one that reaches into ordinary operations. It concerns harassment of staff by people who are not employees, which in a hospitality, retail or transport setting means customers, and in a professional setting means clients and contractors.
Preventing that is a different discipline from preventing harassment between colleagues. The employer does not manage the third party, cannot discipline them, and often depends on them commercially. What it can do is train staff on how to respond, give them explicit authority to disengage, log incidents, and be willing to end a customer relationship, which is where the commercial cost sits.
Landing this on the same day as the trade union changes means two substantial workstreams competing for the same compliance attention in the same fortnight.
The Rest of the Calendar
The sequence continues past October.
A new duty to consult on tips allocation policies is expected by the end of 2026, though the timing is uncertain: the draft statutory Code of Practice on tipping was withdrawn after criticism from Unite, and a fresh consultation is expected.
Changes to the unfair dismissal regime are expected in January 2027, and are the largest item on the list for most employers.
Obligations to keep records relating to holiday pay compliance have been in force since 6 April 2026, with Fair Work Agency enforcement powers arriving in 2027. That gap between duty and enforcement is a window, and the advice being given is to audit and remedy inaccuracies now, on the basis that voluntary correction reduces exposure later.
A consultation on zero- and low-hours workers closed on 25 August, so that particular chance to shape the outcome has gone.
What to Do Before October
The useful distinction here is between what needs a decision and what needs a document.
The trade union access right needs a decision: who receives a request, who evaluates it, what the firm’s posture is, and what digital access would actually look like on its systems. That cannot be delegated to a template, and it is worth settling before a request arrives rather than during one.
The new starter statement needs a document, and only a small one, once the wording is confirmed.
The tribunal change needs neither, but it does need retention policies checked against a six-month window rather than a three-month one.
Harassment needs both: a policy refresh and, more importantly, training that reaches the people who actually encounter third parties, which is usually the most junior and least-trained part of the workforce. It is the same pattern visible in the wider shift of workforce responsibilities onto employers: the obligations are arriving faster than the guidance explaining exactly how to meet them, and the firms that do well will be the ones that build the process before the detail is final. Reading the guidance carefully also protects against the other risk in a busy compliance season, which is acting on a communication that only looks official.
About The Author
More Stories
Waste Incineration Was About to Cost £48 a Tonne More
Lucky Egg Grew Sales 515% to Top Britain’s Growth 100
Extreme Heat Starts Costing Retailers at 25.1C