The Employment Rights Act 2025 (Commencement No. 4 and Transitional and Saving Provisions) Regulations 2026 set the next operative dates for provisions dealing with unfair dismissal. The instrument was made on 26 May 2026 by Kate Dearden, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Business and Trade. According to the Regulations, commencement is split across two dates rather than one. A limited part of section 25 and paragraph 5 of Schedule 3 start on 1 July 2026. The remainder of section 25 and Schedule 3 comes into force on 1 January 2027, subject to the transitional and saving rules in regulation 4.
The July 2026 commencement is narrow. Regulation 2 brings section 25(5) into force only so far as it connects to paragraph 5 of Schedule 3, and it also commences paragraph 5 itself. The explanatory note says that early commencement is intended to activate a power to make further consequential amendments. In practical terms, this is a statute-book preparation step. It allows follow-on amendments to be made under section 154 of the 2025 Act in consequence of the repeal of section 124 of the Employment Rights Act 1996 by section 25(3), before the wider unfair dismissal provisions take effect.
The main operational date is 1 January 2027. Regulation 3 brings into force the remainder of section 25, together with the remainder of Schedule 3, on that date. For employers, advisers and HR teams, that makes January 2027 the planning date for updates to internal guidance, dismissal procedures and case-handling assumptions. The Regulations are clear that the wider commencement does not occur in July 2026. It is deferred to the start of 2027, with transitional treatment set out separately.
The most important compliance point in regulation 4 is the way transition is tied to the effective date of termination. Where an employee is dismissed before 1 January 2027 but the effective date of termination falls on or after 1 January 2027, the specified amendments will apply. Where the effective date of termination falls before 1 January 2027, they will not. That distinction matters for cases that cross the year boundary, especially where notice is given in late 2026 and employment ends after New Year. The Regulations adopt the existing meanings of ‘dismissed’ and ‘effective date of termination’ from Part 10 of the Employment Rights Act 1996, with express references to sections 95 and 97 of that Act.
Regulation 4 is drafted with precision. It applies the transition rule to the amendments made by section 25(2) and (3) of the 2025 Act, together with named amendments in Schedule 3, including paragraphs 1(2), 1(3)(a), 1(4) to (7), 1(9), 2(3) and 4. That drafting point means readers should not treat the instrument as a simple before-and-after switch for every provision linked to section 25. The Regulations identify which amendments follow the termination-date rule, and advisers will need to match the relevant claim or statutory reference to the specific provisions that have been commenced.
The saving provision in regulation 4(3) serves a different purpose. It states that the amendment made by section 25(4) of the 2025 Act does not affect any regulations made under section 209(5) of the Employment Rights Act 1996 as that subsection stood immediately before the amendment came into force. In practice, that preserves the status of earlier subordinate legislation made under the previous version of section 209(5). For organisations managing employment disputes or updating legal guidance, this reduces the risk that existing regulations are read as displaced simply because the parent Act has been amended.
The explanatory note also directs readers to the wider policy material produced during passage of the Employment Rights Bill. It points to the original impact assessments published when the Bill was introduced on 10 October 2024, and to supplementary economic analysis and enactment summary impact assessments published on 7 January 2026. Taken together, the Regulations provide a clear implementation timetable rather than a new substantive policy announcement. The immediate date to note is 1 July 2026 for a limited commencement power. The decisive date for the unfair dismissal provisions themselves is 1 January 2027, with transitional treatment determined by the effective date of termination rather than the date on which dismissal is first communicated.