Five Employment Law Changes Landing This October — Is Your Business Ready?

Every autumn brings a fresh crop of “get ready for October” employment law articles, and I’ll admit I read most of them with one eyebrow raised — plenty of changes trailed months in advance never quite land on the date everyone expected. This year is a good example: if you’ve seen headlines about a ban on fire-and-rehire, or new rules on tipping, arriving this October, it’s worth knowing both have actually been pushed back — fire-and-rehire to January 2027, and the tipping rules to later in 2026, after the draft code ran into criticism

So rather than repeat a list that’s already out of date, here’s what is genuinely confirmed to change next month, and what I’d be doing about each one if I were in your shoes.

1. Tribunal time limits double — 1 October
Employees will have six months, rather than three, to bring most employment tribunal claims. In practice, that means a grievance, a difficult exit, or a disciplinary you handled back in the spring could still resurface at Christmas. If the paperwork from a few months ago wouldn’t stand up to scrutiny today, now is the time to tidy it up — not after a claim lands.

2. The bar for preventing sexual harassment gets higher — 30 October
The current duty to take “reasonable steps” to prevent sexual harassment becomes a duty to take “**all** reasonable steps” — a noticeably stricter test, and one a tribunal will expect you to *evidence*, not simply assert. If your harassment policy hasn’t been reviewed in the last year, or your managers haven’t had specific training on it, this is the change to prioritise.

3. You become responsible for harassment by third parties — 30 October
For the first time, employers can be held liable for sexual harassment of their staff by customers, clients, contractors, or anyone else who isn’t an employee — unless you can show you took all reasonable steps to prevent it. If your people are customer-facing — hospitality, retail, care, anywhere with a front desk — this one deserves particular attention.

4. Trade unions gain new workplace access rights — 30 October
Unions get a statutory right of access to workplaces (both physically and digitally) for recruitment and representation purposes, alongside tighter rules on how recognition ballots are conducted and a new duty on employers to tell staff about their right to join a union. Even if you’ve never had a union approach you, it’s worth understanding the rules before one does.

5. The Adult Social Care Fair Pay Agreement body is established — 30 October
If you’re in the care sector, this is the one to watch. October sees the negotiating body for sector-wide pay and conditions formally stood up, ahead of agreements that will eventually be legally binding across the sector. Everyone else can file this one away for now.

What actually matters here
None of these are changes to make once and forget — numbers 2 and 3 in particular are only as strong as the policy, training and paper trail sitting behind them. That’s exactly where most harassment-related tribunal cases are won or lost, and it’s the area I’d focus on first if you only have time for one thing this month.

If you’re a Breathing Space client, you don’t have to build any of this from scratch. We have a webinar recording on harassment duty we can send to you and our resource library already has everything your managers need:
– A manager’s guide to preventing harassment
– A ready-to-use harassment and bullying policy
– A harassment complaint flowchart for handling reports
– A harassment risk assessment tool
– A plain-English reference guide to the law

Get in touch if you’d like a hand putting any of this into practice — that’s what we’re here for.