Harassment and Union Access: What Changes on 30 October 2026

Harassment and Union Access: What Changes on 30 October 2026

A package of Employment Rights Act 2025 measures comes into force on Friday 30 October 2026, bringing a new third party harassment duty, a statutory route for unions to seek workplace access, and regulations that finally give teeth to the protection against detriment for taking industrial action.

Information last verified on 25 October 2026. This is a developing story; we update it as the record changes.

Status: The commencement regulations are made and the date is fixed. The measures below are not yet in force; they come into force on 30 October 2026.

Jurisdiction scope: Sections 20, 21 and 22 amend the Equality Act 2010 and are marked E+W+S on legislation.gov.uk, so the harassment duties apply in England, Wales and Scotland and not in Northern Ireland. Sections 59, 60, 64, 65 and 76 amend the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 and are also England and Wales and Scotland. S.I. 2026/756, S.I. 2026/1099, S.I. 2026/1101, S.I. 2026/1103 and S.I. 2026/1104 each contain an express extent provision limiting them to England and Wales and Scotland. Only section 56 and Schedule 5, on seafarers, carry United Kingdom extent. Readers in Northern Ireland should check Northern Ireland employment and equality legislation, which these instruments do not change.

What Comes Into Force on 30 October

The trigger is The Employment Rights Act 2025 (Commencement No. 6 and Transitional and Saving Provisions) Regulations 2026, S.I. 2026/1065 (C. 87), made on 1 October 2026. Regulation 3 appoints 30 October 2026 for eight provisions of the Act, commencing sections 59, 60, 64 and 65 only so far as they were not already in force:

• Section 20, employers to take all reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment.
• Section 21, harassment by third parties.
• Section 22, the power to make provision about reasonable steps in sexual harassment cases.
• Section 56 and Schedule 5, seafarers' wages and working conditions.
• Section 59, the right of trade unions to access workplaces.
• Section 60 and Schedule 6, trade union recognition, subject to transitional provision in regulation 4 and savings in regulations 5 and 6.
• Section 64, facilities provided to trade union officials and learning representatives, subject to regulation 7.
• Section 65, facilities for equality representatives, subject to regulation 8.

As a commencement instrument S.I. 2026/1065 has no extent clause of its own, so each provision takes effect across its own extent under section 158 of the Act. That is why the Equality Act 2010 changes reach England, Wales and Scotland but not Northern Ireland, while section 56, which sits in Part 3 Chapter 3, extends to Northern Ireland as well.

Five further instruments do the operational work and all take effect the same day. S.I. 2026/756, made on 6 July 2026, prescribes what an access request and a response notice must contain. S.I. 2026/1101 (union access) and S.I. 2026/1099 (detriment for industrial action) were both made on 15 October 2026. Two orders made on 19 October 2026 appoint the Codes of Practice: S.I. 2026/1103 for the new Code on union access, and S.I. 2026/1104 for the revised ACAS Code on time off for trade union duties and activities.

One drafting point is worth recording because it touches a provision commencing the same day. The King's Printer issued a correction slip for the Act dated 21 October 2026, and it concerns section 64, not the harassment sections: in section 64(3)(b), the inserted subsection (10) should be renumbered as subsection (9A). Regulation 7 of S.I. 2026/1065 limits section 64's effect to tribunal claims about a failure to permit time off occurring on or after 30 October 2026, and S.I. 2026/1104 makes the same cut for the revised Code. For how this Act has been switched on in stages, see our guide to the Employment Rights Act 2025 and its commencement timetable.

The Third Party Harassment Duty

Section 21 inserts three subsections after section 40(1) of the Equality Act 2010. The new section 40(1A) states that an employer (A) must not permit a third party to harass a person (B) who is an employee of A. Section 40(1B) then narrows it: A permits a third party to harass B only if the third party harasses B in the course of B's employment by A, and A failed to take all reasonable steps to prevent the third party from doing so. Section 40(1C) defines a third party as a person other than A or an employee of A, which brings in customers, clients, patients, passengers, contractors, suppliers and members of the public.

Once in force, the duty will not be breached simply because a customer harassed a member of staff. The reasonable steps element will sit inside the definition of permitting rather than standing outside it as a separate defence, but the practical effect is the same: an employer that took all reasonable steps will not have permitted the harassment.

This is a restoration rather than an invention. Section 40(2) to (4) of the Equality Act 2010 originally contained third party harassment provisions, and they were omitted on 1 October 2013 by sections 65 and 103(3) of the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013, commenced by S.I. 2013/2227. Section 21 puts a third party duty back into section 40 after thirteen years, in different words and without the old requirement that the employer knew of two previous occasions.

Section 20 is a separate and much shorter change that is easy to confuse with section 21. It amends section 40A(1) of the Equality Act 2010, the preventative duty inserted by the Worker Protection (Amendment of Equality Act 2010) Act 2023 and in force since 26 October 2024, by inserting the word "all" before "reasonable steps". The two provisions run on different rails. Section 40A is enforceable as an unlawful act under Part 1 of the Equality Act 2006, by the Equality and Human Rights Commission or through the compensation uplift in section 124A; section 40(1A) is a prohibition an employee can raise directly as a harassment claim. There is also a scope difference on the face of the text, in that section 40A and the new section 40B are expressly confined to sexual harassment as defined by section 26(2), while section 40(1A) is not limited in its wording to harassment of that kind.

Section 22 is narrower than its heading suggests, and the distinction is easy to lose. It inserts a new section 40B giving the Secretary of State power to specify by regulations steps that are to be regarded as reasonable for deciding whether an employer took all reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment, naming assessments, published plans or policies, reporting steps and complaint-handling steps as examples of what could be specified. Section 22(3) adds section 40B to section 208(5) of the Equality Act 2010, so any such regulations need a draft approved by resolution of each House.

What commences on 30 October is the power, not a list. We searched legislation.gov.uk for 2026 statutory instruments and draft instruments with harassment, reasonable steps and Equality Act in the title and found nothing exercising section 40B; the only 2026 instrument with harassment in its title, S.I. 2026/344, commences the Protection from Sex-based Harassment in Public Act 2023 and is unrelated. As at 25 October 2026 there is no prescribed list of reasonable steps, and there could not yet be one, because the enabling power is not itself in force until 30 October. What amounts to all reasonable steps will therefore be decided on the facts, by tribunals and by the Commission, on the same evidential ground as other harassment and discrimination claims at work.

Union Access to Workplaces

Section 59 inserts a new Chapter 5ZA, sections 70ZA to 70ZN, into the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992. From 30 October, only a union holding a certificate of independence will be able to use it. Access means physical entry into a workplace, communication with workers, or both, with communication defined broadly to include providing information by any means. The access purposes are to meet, support, represent, recruit or organise workers, whether or not they are members, and to facilitate collective bargaining; section 70ZA(7) expressly excludes organising industrial action.

From 30 October the process will start with an access request, and S.I. 2026/756 prescribes its form: in writing and dated, enclosing the union's certificate of independence, served at the employer's registered office, head office or principal place of business or to an electronic address the employer provided or published, naming an official authorised to negotiate, and setting out the access purposes, the workers and workplaces concerned, the nature, frequency and duration of the access sought, any assistance wanted from the employer, and the notice period the union intends to give.

S.I. 2026/1101 sets the clock, counting working days and excluding weekends, Christmas Day, Good Friday and bank holidays:

• The response period ends at the end of the 15th working day after the day the access request is given (regulation 3).
• The negotiation period ends at the end of the 25th working day after the day the response notice is given (regulation 4).
• An application to the Central Arbitration Committee must be made by the end of the 55th working day after the day the access request is given, or the 70th where the CAC is satisfied an earlier application was not reasonably practicable (regulation 5).

Agree terms in writing inside the negotiation period and notify the CAC jointly, and there is an access agreement under section 70ZD. Where the parties do not agree, standing to go to the CAC is not symmetrical. If the employer gives no response notice before the end of the response period, section 70ZE(1)(a) applies and, under section 70ZE(4)(a), only the union may apply for a determination. If the employer did give a response notice but the negotiation period ends without written agreement, section 70ZE(1)(b) applies and section 70ZE(4)(b) lets either the union or the employer apply. A determination that officials are to have access is treated as an access agreement on the terms the CAC specifies.

Regulation 7 is the small employer gate, and it is a mandatory refusal rather than a discretion. The CAC must refuse access where the employer, taken with any associated employer, employs fewer than 21 workers both on the day the request was received and as an average across the 13 weeks ending with that day, calculated by adding the weekly headcounts and dividing by 13. Workers of an associated employer incorporated outside Great Britain are ignored unless they ordinarily worked in Great Britain. Regulation 7(7) separately deems an agency worker whose contract with the temporary work agency is not a contract of employment to have a contract of employment with that agency for the duration of the assignment, which locates the employment with the agency rather than with the business whose headcount regulation 7(1) measures. The other mandatory refusals are national security, necessity for the prevention, detection or prosecution of criminal offences, access during the five working days after a determination, and an agreement that does not automatically expire within two years, although extension by agreement under section 70ZG is allowed (regulations 8 to 11). Regulation 10 has a second limb that is easy to miss: it also bites where the proposed agreement provides for both physical entry and communication by other means but does not state whether the first occasion of access is to involve physical entry. Refusal is additionally to be regarded as reasonable where access would produce overlapping arrangements, where other requests covering the same workers are outstanding, or where access might jeopardise anyone's health or safety (regulations 12 to 15).

Chapter 4 works in the opposite direction by deeming terms acceptable. The CAC must treat weekly access, in a week including at least four working days, as not unreasonably interfering with the employer's business. It must treat reasonable use of existing accommodation and facilities, and privacy so far as reasonably practicable for direct communications between workers and officials, as reasonable steps the employer should take. And it must treat two working days' notice before each occasion of access, five before the first, and compliance with reasonable instructions including producing identification, as terms it would be reasonable for a union to comply with.

Section 70ZL sets hard limits. Nothing in the Chapter requires or authorises physical entry into a dwelling, a disclosure of personal data without the data subject's consent, or a disclosure that would contravene data protection legislation. A term purporting to do any of those has no effect, and the CAC can neither impose one nor use its enforcement powers to produce that result.

Enforcement runs through the CAC in two stages. An initial complaint under section 70ZH, that the other party breached the agreement or that a non-party prevented access, must be made within three months; the CAC can vary the agreement, declare the complaint well-founded or not, and order specified steps, but there is no financial penalty at that stage. A penalty only arises on a subsequent complaint under section 70ZI, where the same person repeats the conduct, breaches the agreement again or breaches a section 70ZH order within 12 months of the declaration, with its own three month window. Regulation 25 caps the amount at £75,000 for a first order, £150,000 for a second and £500,000 for a third or any subsequent order on the same agreement, with regulation 26 listing the factors the CAC must weigh, including gravity, duration, the number of workers affected and the size and resources of the person. Amounts go to the Consolidated Fund. Section 70ZK makes an access agreement enforceable only by these complaints and conclusively presumed not to be a legally enforceable contract, and section 70ZM gives an appeal to the Employment Appeal Tribunal on questions of law and against a penalty order.

The Code of Practice on the right of trade unions to access workplaces takes effect the same day under S.I. 2026/1103, having been laid in draft on 6 July 2026 and approved by the Commons on 9 September and the Lords on 14 October 2026. Its weight comes from section 207 of the 1992 Act: failing to observe a Code does not of itself make anyone liable to proceedings, but a Code issued by the Secretary of State is admissible in evidence before a court, tribunal or the CAC, and any relevant provision must be taken into account.

Protection Against Detriment for Industrial Action

Section 76 of the Employment Rights Act 2025 inserted sections 236A to 236D into the 1992 Act and has been fully in force since 18 February 2026 under S.I. 2026/3. The right has nonetheless been dormant, because section 236A(1) only protects a worker against detriment of a prescribed description and nothing was prescribed. From 30 October 2026, regulation 3 of S.I. 2026/1099 provides that any detriment is a prescribed detriment for those purposes, and the explanatory note puts it plainly: pursuant to section 236A(4), regulation 3 prohibits all detriments in relation to a worker taking industrial action. Section 236A(4) was drafted to allow exactly that, permitting regulations to prescribe detriment of any description instead of a specific description.

The substantive test stays in the primary legislation. Section 236A(1) gives a worker the right not to be subjected as an individual to a prescribed detriment by any act, or any deliberate failure to act, by the worker's employer, if the act or failure takes place for the sole or main purpose of preventing or deterring the worker from taking protected industrial action, or penalising the worker for doing so. Protected industrial action is defined by section 236A(2) by reference to acts the worker was induced to commit by an act not actionable in tort under section 219. Section 236A(5) carves out dismissal: where the worker is an employee and the detriment amounts to dismissal, sections 237 to 239 govern instead.

Three surrounding sections decide how these claims will run. Section 236B gives a six month limit, running from the act or failure or the last of a series, with a discretion to extend where presenting in time was not reasonably practicable and an ACAS early conciliation extension under section 292A. Section 236C puts the burden on the employer to show what the sole or main purpose of its act or failure was. Section 236D requires a declaration where the complaint succeeds and allows compensation the tribunal considers just and equitable, subject to mitigation and to reduction for contributory conduct. These are employment tribunal claims, and section 236A(7) states there is no other remedy for infringement of the right.

Two further regulations define the edges. Regulation 4 confirms that nothing in the regulations affects the common law rules enabling the deduction of pay on account of a worker having taken part in protected industrial action, so withholding pay for strike days will not be caught. Regulation 5 adds section 236A to Schedule A2 to the 1992 Act, bringing section 207A into play: where a claim concerns a matter covered by a relevant Code of Practice and the employer unreasonably failed to comply with it, the tribunal may increase an award by no more than 25 per cent, and may reduce an award by up to the same proportion for an unreasonable failure by the employee. The qualifier carries weight, because section 207A(4) defines a relevant Code as one issued under that Chapter which relates exclusively or primarily to procedure for the resolution of disputes, and neither Code taking effect on 30 October is plainly of that description. Section 207A(1) is framed in terms of a claim by an employee while section 236A protects workers more broadly, which is a gap tribunals will have to address.

Analysis: Why This Matters

The following is analysis from the Recording Law Editorial Team.

Two very different kinds of change land on the same Friday, and conflating them will cause avoidable mistakes. The harassment measures tighten standards that already exist, by one word and one restored duty, so an employer can respond by reviewing what it already does. The union access provisions create a procedural machine that did not exist at all, and an employer cannot comply with it in advance, because the obligations arise only once a union serves a request.

The single word in section 20 is the most consequential small amendment in the package. Until now an employer could argue that the steps it took were reasonable even if other reasonable steps were available. From 30 October that argument does not obviously survive language asking whether all reasonable steps were taken, and the question becomes which further steps were reasonably available and not taken, which is harder to answer with a policy document alone. Section 21 is where the exposure sits, and it falls unevenly: for an office employer whose staff rarely meet outsiders the third party duty is close to theoretical, while for hospitality, retail, transport, healthcare, social care, contact centres and security work the third parties are the business model. The honest answer to what the required steps are is that nobody can point to a statutory list, because section 22 commences a power that has not been exercised, and anything made under it will need affirmative approval in both Houses. Any claim this week that the law now defines all reasonable steps should be treated sceptically: as at 25 October 2026 nothing had been made under that power.

On the union side, the enforcement design is more cautious than the headline figures suggest. A first breach of an access agreement cannot produce a fine at all. A penalty needs a second complaint, about the same person, inside 12 months of the declaration and within its own three month window, and the money goes to the Consolidated Fund, so a union that wins gains compliance rather than compensation. Section 70ZK's statement that an access agreement is conclusively presumed not to be a legally enforceable contract points the same way: this is a regulated relationship, not a commercial one.

The likely battlegrounds are the 21 worker gate and the deemed terms. The gate runs two tests on different timeframes, counts associated employers, and has separate deeming rules for agency workers, for overseas incorporation and for seafarers, which gives a group or franchise structure plenty to argue about. The deemed terms pull the other way, because weekly access, reasonable use of existing accommodation and private communication become the baseline a determination starts from rather than concessions a union has to win. The section 70ZL data protection limits also deserve more attention than they will get: a union cannot obtain worker contact details through this route without consent, which constrains the single most valuable thing an organising union could want from an employer.

The detriment regulations change the economics of a dispute without changing the basic bargain. Pay can still be withheld for strike days, which regulation 4 makes explicit. From 30 October 2026, everything else an employer might do to make striking costly sits inside a prohibition, with the burden on the employer to prove its purpose, a six month limitation period and a possible 25 per cent uplift where a Code qualifying under section 207A(4) was unreasonably ignored. The practical consequence is that internal messages, rota decisions and management notes made during a dispute become the main evidence, because purpose is what the employer has to prove.

What Happens Next

No regulations under the new section 40B of the Equality Act 2010 exist. The power commences on 30 October 2026, anything made under it needs a draft approved by resolution of each House, and none of these instruments names a date or a consultation. Until then, all reasonable steps is an evidential standard rather than a checklist.

Section 60 and Schedule 6 reshape the statutory recognition and derecognition procedure in Schedule A1 to the 1992 Act, and regulations 4 to 6 of S.I. 2026/1065 run a long carve-out: most of the Schedule 6 changes do not apply where the relevant application reached the CAC before 30 October 2026. For a period, two versions of the recognition rules will run in parallel depending on when an application was received.

Section 56 and Schedule 5 restructure the Seafarers' Wages Act 2023 and create a power to make remuneration regulations for non-qualifying seafarers. We found no instrument exercising that new power on legislation.gov.uk as at 25 October 2026, so the restructured framework commences ahead of the detail that will make it bite.

S.I. 2026/1101 carries a review clause requiring a published report within five years of the day it comes into force, and at intervals of no more than five years after that. The Act's staged commencement also continues: the commencement note to S.I. 2026/1065 records further provisions already appointed for 1 January 2027 by S.I. 2026/559, so this is the sixth commencement instrument rather than the last.

This is general legal information, not legal advice. It describes instruments that apply in England, Wales and Scotland, apart from section 56 and Schedule 5 of the Employment Rights Act 2025, which extend to the whole of the United Kingdom. It does not cover Northern Ireland employment or equality law. Details were verified against legislation.gov.uk on 25 October 2026. For advice on your own situation, consult a qualified solicitor or an adviser regulated in your jurisdiction.

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• Employment tribunal time limits in the UK
• Zero hours contracts and the Employment Rights Act 2025
• Recording conversations at work in the UK

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Last updated: 2026-10-25. This is a developing story; details verified as of 2026-10-25.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is my employer liable if a customer harasses me at work?

From 30 October 2026 the new section 40(1A) of the Equality Act 2010 says an employer must not permit a third party to harass its employee. Section 40(1B) limits that to cases where the harassment happened in the course of your employment AND the employer failed to take all reasonable steps to prevent it. Liability is not automatic because a customer behaved badly; the question is what steps were reasonably available and whether the employer took them. This applies in England, Wales and Scotland.

What counts as all reasonable steps?

No statutory list exists. Section 22 of the Employment Rights Act 2025 commences a power to make regulations specifying reasonable steps, inserted as section 40B of the Equality Act 2010, but as at 25 October 2026 no such regulations appear on legislation.gov.uk and the power itself is not in force until 30 October 2026. Section 40B names assessments, published plans or policies, reporting steps and complaint-handling steps as things that COULD be specified. Until regulations are made, what is reasonable is decided on the facts.

Can a trade union demand access to my workplace from 30 October?

A union holding a certificate of independence can serve a statutory access request, which is not the same as demanding entry. The employer has until the end of the 15th working day to respond, then up to the end of the 25th working day after that response to negotiate terms. If no agreement is reached, either side can apply to the Central Arbitration Committee by the end of the 55th working day after the request, or the 70th where an earlier application was not reasonably practicable. Access exists only on the terms of an agreement or a CAC determination, and organising industrial action is not a permitted access purpose.

Does the union access right apply to small employers?

Not where the employer is small on both tests in regulation 7 of S.I. 2026/1101. The CAC must refuse access where the employer, taken with any associated employer, employs fewer than 21 workers on the day the access request is received AND an average of fewer than 21 workers across the 13 weeks ending with that day. Associated employers count towards the total. Regulation 7(7) deems an agency worker whose contract with the temporary work agency is not a contract of employment to have one with that agency for the duration of the assignment, which places the employment with the agency rather than with the business where the worker is placed.

Can a union official enter my home if I work from home?

No. Section 70ZL of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 states that nothing in the access Chapter requires or authorises physical entry by any person into a dwelling. A term of an access agreement purporting to allow it has no effect, and the CAC cannot impose one. The same section stops an access agreement authorising disclosure of personal data without the data subject's consent.

Does any of this apply in Northern Ireland?

Almost none of it. Sections 20, 21 and 22 amend the Equality Act 2010 and are marked as extending to England and Wales and Scotland, and all five supporting instruments contain an express extent provision limited to England and Wales and Scotland. The one exception is section 56 and Schedule 5, on seafarers' wages and working conditions, which carry United Kingdom extent. Northern Ireland has its own equality and employment legislation, which these instruments do not change.

Can I be penalised by my employer for taking part in a strike?

From 30 October 2026 regulation 3 of S.I. 2026/1099 makes any detriment a prescribed detriment for the purposes of section 236A of the 1992 Act, so the protection covers detriments of every description rather than a listed few. The test is whether the employer acted, or deliberately failed to act, for the sole or main purpose of preventing, deterring or penalising protected industrial action, and section 236C puts the burden of showing its purpose on the employer. Dismissal is handled separately under sections 237 to 239.

Can my employer still stop my pay for strike days?

Yes. Regulation 4 of S.I. 2026/1099 states that nothing in the regulations affects the common law rules enabling the deduction of pay on account of a worker having taken part in protected industrial action. The new protection is aimed at other forms of detriment, not at the loss of pay for work not done.

How long do I have to bring a detriment claim?

Section 236B of the 1992 Act gives six months, beginning with the date of the act or failure complained of, or with the last of a series of similar acts or failures. A tribunal may allow longer where it was not reasonably practicable to present the complaint in time, and ACAS early conciliation extends the period under section 292A.