Back to News >

You may be aware that the government was planning on revoking a lot of EU law at the end of 2023, including employment law. It has since been decided that this will not be the case and therefore EU law will remain binding in the UK.

In spite of this, the government has proposed some changes to employment law which you can find below:

1. Changing the Working Time Regulations to combine ordinary annual leave and additional annual leave to create one statutory entitlement, keeping the overall limit of 28 days in place.

2. Further to the above, it is proposed that there will no longer be a requirement to maintain records of working hours. Currently employers are required to maintain records of working hours for the following to ensure compliance with the Working Time Directive:

• Those who have not opted out of the 48 hour maximum working week;
• Night shift workers hours;
• Young workers hours.

3. Allowing employers to ‘roll up’ holiday pay, whereby workers receive additional pay as part of their basic pay to reflect an amount for holidays accrued. This practice at present is technically unlawful under the current legislation.

4. Getting rid of the need to elect an employee representative within the TUPE process where businesses have less than 50 employees or where the transfer affects less than 10 employees.

5. Reduction to the duration of the non-compete restrictive covenant down to 3 months. It is currently unclear whether this would make any clauses above 3 months void or whether it would only be enforceable up to 3 months. Other covenants such as non-solicitation would not be impacted.

It is important to note that these are currently proposed, and no suggested implementation date has been put forward. We shall continue to monitor this and let you know as and when we become aware of any confirmation on the above.

If you need assistance with your HR policies, procedures and training, then contact the team at HE2day on 01325 288 299 (opt2) or email helpdesk@hr2day.co.uk