On 23 October 2025, the UK Government launched the first of their consultations on the new rights set out in the Employment Rights Bill (Bill), which is expected to be passed into law imminently.

The Bill provides the framework for numerous changes to employment law but much of the substance of the new rights will be set out in regulations. As promised earlier this year, the Government has now published a series of consultations to help shape those regulations and determine exactly how the Bill’s provisions will be implemented. 

Below we will briefly cover two of the consultations which look at changes to trade union rights, each of which is due to close on 18 December 2025. These changes are vital for all employers to understand as, even if their workforce is not currently unionised, they will nevertheless be impacted by the new duties.

Duty to Notify

The Bill introduces a new duty on employers to give their employees a written statement of their right to join a trade union from October 2026. The consultation paper is said to be aimed at ensuring the duty is effective, proportionate and workable for workers and employers.

The key questions considered as part of the consultation are:

• Content: What information needs to be included in the statement, and whether the statement should be drafted by the employer (in line with any minimum content requirements) or be based on a government standard.
• Manner: Whether information needs to be given directly or indirectly, and whether this should be different for new workers compared to existing workers.
• Timing: How often the information needs to be given, and whether this standard should be the same for all organisations regardless of sector or size.

Right of Access

The Bill sets out that trade unions will have a new right to access workplaces and engage with workers for the purpose of meeting, recruiting, supporting, representing or organising them, as well as for facilitating collective bargaining. This is expected to take effect in October 2026.

Access for these purposes means both physical access and digital communications.

Under the Bill’s framework, unions and employers are expected to work together to voluntarily agree access arrangements, which will then be recorded by the Central Arbitration Committee (CAC). Where they are unable to agree, either the union or the employer can make a referral to the CAC to determine whether (and how) access should be granted. The CAC will also have the power to enforce agreements in line with the five ‘access principles’ set out in the Bill, with the ability to issue fines for non-compliance.

The substantive questions asked by the consultation are as follows:

• How access requests need to be made, including whether they should follow a standard government template (provided via a new Code of Practice on Trade Union Right of Access), and the level of information that must be included in the request and employer’s response.
• How notification should be made to the CAC of successful agreements and any variations.
• The appropriate length of response and negotiation periods, and the maximum duration of an access agreement. The government proposes a relatively short initial 5 working day period for the employer to respond to a union’s request, a 15 working day period to negotiate, and a maximum of 25 days from the request for a referral to be made to the CAC. The latter requirement is said to be aimed to ensure that employers are not left in a position of uncertainty about whether a referral will be made. Once an agreement is in place, the government proposes a maximum duration of two years.
• Whether small employers with fewer than 21 workers should be exempt.
• What factors the CAC will consider when assessing a request, with the government proposing that requests are likely to be unreasonable if there is already a recognised union, it would use a disproportionate level of resource, or if it would give the employer less than 5 working days to prepare. For the terms of agreements, the government suggests that weekly access may be reasonable, with a minimum of two working days’ notice required.

Views are also being sought on the proposed £75,000 maximum standard cap on fines from the CAC, with a higher amount of £150,000 for repeated breaches, as well as the factors that the CAC should consider when assessing the fine.

BDBF is a leading employment law firm based at Bank in the City of London. If you would like to discuss any issues relating to the content of this article, please contact Rose Lim (RoseLim@bdbf.co.uk), Amanda Steadman (AmandaSteadman@bdbf.co.uk) or your usual BDBF contact.