The Employee Study and Training (Procedural Requirements) (Amendment) Regulations 2026 make a targeted change to employment tribunal procedure. Statutory Instrument 2026 No. 473 was made on 28 April 2026, laid before Parliament on 29 April 2026 and is due to come into force on 1 October 2026. The instrument extends the deadline for bringing certain tribunal complaints from three months to six months. The affected cases are those involving an employer’s failure, or threatened failure, to comply with an employee’s right to be accompanied at a meeting to discuss study or training.
As the legislation.gov.uk text shows, the amendment is made by a simple change to regulation 17(2) of the 2010 Regulations. In sub-paragraphs (a) and (b), the word “three” is replaced with “six”. That drafting point matters because it shows the amendment is procedural rather than substantive. The Regulations do not create a new employment right. They alter the time available to enforce an existing right through the Employment Tribunal.
The Secretary of State made the Regulations under sections 63F(4), 63G(1)(d) and 236(5) of the Employment Rights Act 1996. Those provisions sit within the statutory framework governing the employee right to request time to study or train and the associated procedure. For policy teams and practitioners, the scope is deliberately narrow. The change applies only to complaints linked to the accompaniment requirement in meetings about study or training. It does not recast the wider structure of tribunal limitation periods across employment law.
Regulation 3 introduces a clear transitional rule. The new six-month limit applies only where the alleged failure, or threat to fail, to comply with regulation 16(2), (3) or (5) of the 2010 Regulations occurs on or after 1 October 2026. That means the key date is the date of the employer’s act, or threatened act, not the date on which a worker decides to begin a claim. If the relevant event took place before 1 October 2026, the previous three-month deadline continues to apply.
The territorial extent is also set out in the instrument. The Regulations extend to England and Wales and Scotland, so the amended time limit will operate across Great Britain. That point is important for employers with cross-border operations within Great Britain. Policies, template correspondence and internal escalation processes will need to reflect a longer tribunal window for this specific category of complaint from the autumn.
In practical terms, the extension gives employees and advisers more time to assess whether there has been non-compliance, obtain advice and prepare a case. For employers, it lengthens the period during which a dispute about accompaniment rights at a study or training meeting may still crystallise into tribunal proceedings. Although narrow, limitation periods often determine whether workplace rights can be used in practice. A move from three months to six months is therefore more than a drafting adjustment, even where the underlying right itself is unchanged.
The Regulations are signed by Kate Dearden, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Business and Trade. The Explanatory Note says a full impact assessment is available through the department’s material on the Employment Rights Act 2025 and related secondary legislation. For now, the compliance message is straightforward. From 1 October 2026, complaints about failures or threatened failures to honour the right to be accompanied at study or training meetings will have a six-month tribunal filing period, but only where the relevant conduct occurs on or after that date.