The first wave of the Employment Rights Act took effect on 6 April 2026. Three months on, most payroll systems have caught up. Most handbooks haven't.
There's a pattern I keep seeing this summer. A business updated payroll in April because the software forced them to. SSP is being paid correctly from day one. And the sickness policy in the handbook still tells staff, in writing, that sick pay starts on the fourth day.
That's not a compliance technicality. It's a live contradiction between what you do and what you've published, and it's the kind of thing that gets read out at a tribunal. This piece isn't about what's coming. It's an audit of what already changed, written for July rather than March: the specific wording that's now wrong, where it hides, and what to replace it with.
What actually changed on 6 April 2026
Five measures from the Employment Rights Act 2025 came into force together, per the government's implementation timetable:
| Measure | Old rule | Rule since 6 April 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Statutory sick pay | Paid from day four; lower earnings limit applied | Paid from day one, to all employees, at £123.25/week or 80% of normal weekly earnings if lower |
| Paternity leave | 26 weeks' service required | Day-one right; can also be taken after shared parental leave |
| Unpaid parental leave | One year's service required | Day-one right |
| Bereaved partner's paternity leave | Did not exist | Up to 52 weeks if the mother or primary adopter dies in the child's first year |
| Collective redundancy protective award | Maximum 90 days' pay | Maximum 180 days' pay per affected employee |
Alongside those, whistleblowing protection was extended to cover workers who blow the whistle on sexual harassment, and voluntary action plans on gender equality and menopause support were introduced.
The legacy wording audit: five phrases to search for
Open your handbook, use Ctrl+F, and look for these. Each one is a sentence that was true in March and is wrong now.
1. "Waiting days" or "SSP is payable from the fourth day". The three waiting days are gone. If your sickness absence policy walks staff through them, it's describing a rule that no longer exists. While you're in that policy, check for the lower earnings limit too; part-time and low-paid staff who didn't qualify before now do. (If your sickness policy hasn't been reviewed since before 2026, it likely has bigger problems than SSP wording.)
2. "26 weeks' service" anywhere near paternity leave. The qualifying period is gone. So is the rule preventing paternity leave after shared parental leave. New fathers and partners can give notice from their first day of employment.
3. "One year's service" near parental leave. Unpaid parental leave is now a day-one right. This one hides in family-leave policies that were copied forward for years because nobody ever asked about parental leave.
4. No mention of bereaved partner's paternity leave. This is a new entitlement, so the problem isn't wrong wording, it's absence. Up to 52 weeks of leave for a bereaved father or partner is not something you want a grieving employee to discover before their manager does.
5. A whistleblowing policy that lists protected disclosures and doesn't include sexual harassment. Disclosures about sexual harassment now attract whistleblowing protection. Your policy's list of qualifying disclosures, and the reporting route behind it, should say so, especially with the October 2026 harassment duty about to raise the bar again.
The one that isn't about wording: the protective award
The doubling of the collective redundancy protective award, from 90 to 180 days' pay per employee, doesn't need a handbook edit. It needs a behaviour edit.
If you propose 20 or more redundancies at one establishment and get the consultation wrong, the maximum penalty per person just doubled. For a business restructuring 25 roles on an average salary of £35,000, sloppy consultation was already a £600,000 risk. It's now £1.2 million. The redundancy policy might not change, but whoever runs your next restructure needs to know the price of shortcuts did.
Why July is the right time to fix this
Three reasons this shouldn't wait for a year-end tidy-up.
The contradiction is already live. Every week your handbook describes the old SSP rules, you're publishing incorrect information about a statutory entitlement your own payroll is administering correctly. If a dispute ever turns on what an employee was told, that document is the evidence.
October is close. The "all reasonable steps" harassment duty and third-party harassment liability arrive in October 2026, along with tribunal time limits extending from three months to six. A handbook that hasn't absorbed April's changes by then is two waves behind.
January is closer than it looks. From 1 January 2027, anyone with six months' service can claim unfair dismissal and the compensation cap disappears. Anyone you hired this month reaches six months' service on New Year's Day. The probation and dismissal machinery they'll be judged under needs to exist before their review, not after it.
The catch-up checklist
Five checks, in the order I'd run them:
1. Sickness absence policy: remove waiting days and the lower earnings limit, state the day-one position and the current rate mechanics.
2. Paternity and parental leave policies: strip every qualifying-service reference, add the post-shared-parental-leave flexibility.
3. Family and compassionate leave: add bereaved partner's paternity leave as a named entitlement with a clear route to invoke it.
4. Whistleblowing policy: include sexual harassment disclosures as protected, and check the reporting route works for that subject matter.
5. Version and date the result. A dated, versioned handbook update is evidence you took the changes seriously. An undated Word file called "Handbook FINAL v3" is not.
If you'd rather not do the Ctrl+F archaeology by hand, this is exactly what Bounda's handbook compliance check does: paste your handbook in and it flags every clause that's out of step with current law, April 2026 changes included, with the legislation cited behind each one.
Quick answers
What employment law changes took effect in April 2026?
From 6 April 2026: day-one statutory sick pay with the lower earnings limit removed, day-one paternity and unpaid parental leave, bereaved partner's paternity leave of up to 52 weeks, whistleblowing protection for sexual harassment disclosures, and a doubled collective redundancy protective award.
What is the SSP rate from April 2026?
£123.25 per week, or 80% of normal weekly earnings where that's lower, payable from the first day of sickness with no earnings threshold.
Is paternity leave now a day-one right?
Yes, since 6 April 2026, with no qualifying service. It can also now be taken after shared parental leave.
Do the April 2026 changes apply to small businesses?
Yes. None of the April measures carries a small-employer exemption.
What comes next?
October 2026: the "all reasonable steps" harassment duty, third-party harassment liability, and six-month tribunal time limits. 1 January 2027: the six-month unfair dismissal qualifying period, removal of the compensation cap, and fire-and-rehire restrictions. The full measure-by-measure timeline is on our Employment Rights Act 2025 page.
