The UK Employment Rights Act: family friendly rights changes, flexible working and SSP

The Act includes 28 employment reforms and, cumulatively, the scale, breadth and complexity of the changes are significant for employers (read our tracker to keep abreast of developments, including timescales for implementation).

To support employers as they respond to the Act’s diverse measures, our more detailed briefings focus on specific topics within the Act and include the latest developments and practical implications for employers.

For our briefing focusing on the Act’s changes to:

• trade union and collective rights, read our update
• dismissal and re-engagement (“fire and rehire”), read our update
• collective redundancies, read our update
• enforcement, read our update
• zero and low hours contract workers, read our update
• unfair dismissal, read our update
• equality and harassment duties, read our update

In this briefing, we analyse the changes to family friendly rights, including flexible working, and to SSP.

What does the Act say?

Flexible working

The eight statutory business reasons for refusing a flexible working request will remain unchanged. However, the Act adds two new requirements: (i) that it must be reasonable for the employer to refuse an application on that/those ground(s) and (ii) when notifying any refusal, the employer must explain why it considers that it is reasonable to refuse on that/those ground(s).

In addition, draft regulations are expected to specify steps to be taken to consult with the employee before refusing an application (a consultation duty was only recently added in 2024). The government launched a consultation on 5 February 2026, which stated that it is looking to learn about existing practice from employers and employees who have held a meeting about a flexible working request since the requirement to consult was introduced in April 2024, and to gather feedback on a proposed new process for employers to follow. The Acas Code of Practice on requests for flexible working (‘Acas Code’) will also need to be updated, and the government has indicated that further public consultation may follow on this. Reflecting the need for consultation, further regulations and changes to the Acas Code, the government has confirmed the Act’s flexible working measures will not take effect until 2027.

Protection from dismissal during pregnancy, maternity and other leave and upon return

Since April 2024, where a redundancy situation arises during the protected period of pregnancy, maternity leave and an additional protected period after returning to work (18 months after birth), an employee has a priority right to be offered a suitable alternative vacancy (where one is available). A failure to offer this will result in any dismissal being automatically unfair and potentially discriminatory. Similar provisions apply to protect employees during and after shared parental/adoption leave.

To extend protection further, the Act allows for further regulations to be made to cover other types of dismissals (i.e. for non-redundancy reasons) which take place during pregnancy, maternity leave and upon return. Protection is also expected to be extended to employees in respect of adoption, shared parental, neonatal care and bereaved partners paternity leave and for a period after returning to work from these forms of leave.

The government has said that regulations will need to ‘provide appropriate protection while balancing the need for employers/business to be able to dismiss where genuine and serious reasons exist’ – suggesting there will not be an outright ban on dismissals during a protected period and some exceptions may apply. Exceptions might include, for example, where genuine disciplinary or capability reasons exist, but this remains to be seen.

A consultation was launched on 23 October 2025 and closed on 15 January 2026. The consultation considered, amongst other aspects, the “specific circumstances” in which dismissal of an employee during any protected period (e.g. pregnancy, maternity and other family leave and upon return) will be lawful and when those protections should start and end.

The consultation puts forward a number of options including:

• Introducing a stricter test for the fairness of the dismissal. The employer would still have to show one of the current fair reasons for dismissal (conduct, capability, SOSR, redundancy, illegality) but the current “range of reasonable responses” test would be replaced with a stricter standard; or
• Narrowing the scope of and/or removing some of the current fair dismissal reasons (as listed above). Examples given include narrowing the conduct ground to gross misconduct only and removing capability and SOSR as fair reasons during the protected period.

You can read about further aspects of the consultation here.

Further regulations will be published in due course. Whatever the outcome, employers should anticipate new complexity in this area of the law and that dismissals will only be lawful in limited scenarios.

Whilst awaiting further detail, employers can prepare for potential changes by ensuring they have a robust system in place to readily identify employees who are in a protected period across the business (particularly in large organisations) to support risk management.

Parental leave and other leave

From 6 April 2026, paternity and unpaid parental leave became day one rights and the restriction on taking paternity leave after shared parental leave was removed.

In addition, in 2027 a new right to unpaid bereavement leave will be introduced and will be extended to employees who have suffered “pregnancy loss”, defined as pre-24 week pregnancy loss, or the failure of an embryo to become implanted following a transfer carried out in the course of providing treatment services within the meaning of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990.

Further detail will be confirmed in regulations, including the employee’s required relationship to the person who has died (or in the case of pregnancy loss, the relationship to the person who has suffered the pregnancy loss, or the child that was to be born had the pregnancy loss not occurred) and the length of leave (at least one week).

A consultation on these details including eligibility, when and how leave should be taken and notice and evidence requirements closed on 15 January 2026.

SSP

From 6 April 2026, SSP is available from the first day of illness, removing the three-day waiting period. In addition the lower earnings limit (LEL) was removed, making SSP available to lower paid employees. The rate of SSP is set at either the flat rate in force from time to time or 80% of the employee’s average weekly earnings, whichever is lower.

Practical implications for employers

Flexible working

Although the government pledged to make flexible working ‘the default’, the right to request flexible working will remain a ‘right to request’ and not an absolute right to receive it.

In terms of the new and additional test of ‘reasonableness’, it is not currently clear how this will be assessed by an employment tribunal. The consultation states that “the reasonableness test has a different statutory basis to other tests used in employment law”, and that “reasonableness will be considered against the 8 business reasons for rejecting a flexible working request”. The consultation also indicates that statutory guidance will be produced to help employers to understand and meet their obligations under the new reasonableness test, and that ACAS will consider revising its Code of Practice to include specific guidance on the reasonableness test (which would require a further public consultation). The government will also set out a new consultation process that employers must follow when they are unable to accept a statutory flexible working request.

To prepare for this change, employers should:

• anticipate an increase in tribunal claims to consider what is ‘reasonable’ and await statutory guidance and potential changes to the ACAS Code; and
• be ready to explain and evidence any reason(s) for refusal fully and carefully (although many already do so in practice). As part of this, employers may wish to review their flexible working strategy, including any ‘return to the office’ mandates, and revisit the business rationale for any current working arrangements to be absolutely clear and consistent on this in anticipation of future flexible working requests and potential ‘reasonableness’ challenge(s).

Critically, the current compensation regime will remain unchanged, with the maximum compensation for a complaint under the flexible working regime set at eight weeks’ pay (subject to the statutory cap on a week’s pay, currently £719) – a relatively low penalty. However, employees bringing flexible working requests may also have other statutory protections, specifically potential discrimination claims, including failure to make reasonable adjustments and indirect discrimination (where compensation is potentially uncapped).

Following government consultation, further regulations will confirm the steps an employer must take to consult with an employee before refusing a request. This might include, for example, inviting the employee to a meeting to discuss the request (currently a recommended step in the Acas Code, but not a statutory requirement).

Parental and other leave

Extending these rights to ‘day one’ from 6 April 2026 has widened the pool of eligible employees; however the overall impact on employers is expected to be relatively low as (i) statutory paternity leave is currently limited to two weeks only and (ii) the uptake of parental leave is understood to be low given that it is both unpaid and a relatively unknown right.

In terms of the proposal to introduce unpaid bereavement leave from 2027, those employers who do not currently offer any form of compassionate leave will perhaps see a greater impact, depending on the detail to come and following consultation. Others will want to understand how any new right to bereavement leave may interact with any existing compassionate leave policy.

For clarity, the new broader right to bereavement leave does not change the current entitlement of two weeks’ paid parental bereavement leave (available since April 2020).

SSP

Removing the three-day waiting period and LEL increases the pool of workers eligible for SSP and impacts those employers who offer SSP only (rather than those that offer enhanced company sick pay). According to recent figures, an estimated 70% of all sick days were not qualifying days for SSP as they fell within the three-day waiting period. In addition, it has been estimated that 1.3 – 2 million workers are excluded from SSP due to falling below the current LEL.

Critics of the previous system argue that it encouraged those on low pay (and particularly below the LEL) to come to work when unwell and the changes may therefore reduce some worker presenteeism. Conversely, some employers saw the waiting days as a deterrent for employees taking days off due to minor ailments that do not necessarily require absence. Some are concerned that sickness absence levels may rise as a result of these changes.

Some employers may experience increased SSP costs from 6 April 2026 and should review sickness absence procedures and ensure managers are adequately trained on managing short-term absence.

Wider reform

The government’s wider review of the entire family leave and pay system, announced on 1 July 2025 and which is expected to run for 18 months, is to ensure ‘that parental leave offers the best possible support to working families’. This includes a call for evidence. 

As part of the review, it is expected that the government will re-evaluate shared parental leave which is widely considered to be overly complex and historic uptake has been low. After the review’s conclusion, the government will publish its findings and a roadmap, setting out any further proposed family leave forms and timescales.

Significant further reform is therefore anticipated in this area and employers should stay tuned for further detail.

Further reading on family friendly rights:

Read our briefing on statutory neonatal care leave and pay, which came into force on 6 April 2025.