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UK Employment and Health & Safety Law

Body of UK statute and case law governing employment rights, workplace safety, dismissal, redundancy, and employer duties to staff.

Current stories

leadershipOne report1 publisher

Smart glasses brand's poll finds 83% back workplace limits on camera glasses

Research commissioned by smart glasses brand Even Realities found 83% of respondents in the UK back workplace restrictions on camera glasses. The case for rewriting recording and confidentiality policies rests mainly on employment lawyers' advice.

Reality

Evidence30
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+25
Incentives70
Confidence60
leadershipOne report1 publisher

UK consultation proposes making employers prove contractors are not workers

UK ministers have opened a consultation on ending bogus self-employment that the Resolution Foundation says may put 900,000 people at risk. Employers that use substitution clauses are the stated target of its proposals.

Reality

Evidence50
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+8
Incentives40
Confidence55
leadershipConfirmed3 publishers

Burnham moves to limit the non-competes and long notice periods used to hold tech and finance staff

Prime Minister Andy Burnham is expected to announce a clampdown on non-compete clauses and long notice periods used to hold tech and finance staff. Employers that rely on these terms get a direction to plan against from the speech, but the rules themselves have not been written.

Perspective Coverage

3 publishers
Builder
Builder 20%
Operator
Operator 45%
Investor
Investor 35%

Reality

Evidence66
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+20
Incentives70
Confidence64
leadershipOne report1 publisher

Study of more than 8,000 midlife women weakens the productivity case for UK menopause plans

Monash University's Susan Davis found menopause was not linked to absence or lost productivity in a study of more than 8,000 midlife women. The result undercuts the work case for the menopause plans large UK employers must publish from April 2027.

Reality

Evidence40
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+25
Incentives
Not scored
Confidence38
leadershipOne report1 publisher

Longer AI-drafted grievances push HR to narrow complaints in person before investigating

Guidance in Personnel Today says employees increasingly draft grievances with generative AI and that legal jargon now appears in nearly all of them. HR teams have to trim those complaints while keeping each investigation thorough enough to count as reasonable.

Reality

Evidence40
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+15
Incentives
Not scored
Confidence45
leadershipOne report1 publisher

Glasgow's fire-and-rehire notices to 23,000 staff run out just before January's ban

Glasgow City Council has put all 23,000 non-teaching staff on fire-and-rehire notice over a new equal-pay grading system that would cut pay for 11%. Council leader Ricky Bell's idea of dismissing only Unison members has the union taking legal advice.

Publishers:theguardian.com

Reality

Evidence55
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+10
Incentives60
Confidence55
leadershipOne report1 publisher

Acas's draft code spells out the meeting UK managers must hold before refusing flexible work

Acas is consulting until 17 December on a code for the autumn 2027 rule that UK managers meet staff before refusing a flexible working request. Employers can still say no, but only after that meeting and on the basis of evidence.

Reality

Evidence60
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+10
Incentives65
Confidence62
leadershipOne report1 publisher

Probation notes written now may have to justify redundancy scores in 2027

Britain's Employment Rights Act cuts the unfair-dismissal qualifying period from two years to six months on 1 January 2027. Writing in Personnel Today, Sarah Kerr argues that a thin probation file can leave a later redundancy score hard to explain.

Reality

Evidence40
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap0
Incentives
Not scored
Confidence45
productOne report1 publisher

Employers are scoring workers on AI usage in performance reviews

Leaderboards at Disney, Meta, JP Morgan and KPMG rank how much staff use AI, and Accenture's chief says promotion depends on working that way, which leaves reviewers holding a usage count rather than evidence the work got better.

Publishers:bbc.co.uk

Reality

Evidence42
Adoption35
Hype gap+20
Incentives66
Confidence46
buildOne report1 publisher

OpenAI Wrote The Hazard Notice Itself, And English Employment Law Knows What To Do With One

A rollback, a new internal eval category and a co-authored study put "unhealthy emotional dependence" in the vendor's own hand. That is the evidence base a duty-of-care claim starts from.

Publishers:dev.to

Reality

Evidence46
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+32
Incentives
Not scored
Confidence41