The Employment Rights (Amendment, Revocation and Transitional Provision) Regulations 2023
Changes to these regulations were due to come into force from 1 January 2024, and would affect three areas of employment:
- TUPE;
- annual leave; and
- working time.
We touched on annual leave in a previous bitesized edition. In this edition, we will cover TUPE and working time.
TUPE consultation reforms
The requirement to elect employee representatives will be removed for the purposes of consultation for:
- Businesses with less than 50 employees.
- Businesses of any size involved in a transfer of less than 10 employees.
This will mean that business who meet the above criteria can consult directly with their employees, without any need for employee representatives.
The reforms will affect TUPE transfers taking place on or after 1 July 2024.
Working Time Regulations (WTR) reforms
Employers will not longer be required to comply with the increased record-keeping requirements relating to maximum weekly working time and daily and weekly rest, that came from a 2019 European Court of Justice judgment.
Instead, the WTR will be amended to state that employers are not required to keep a record of the daily working hours of each worker, provided they can demonstrate compliance with weekly working limits.
It is important for employers to keep in mind that whilst record-keeping requirements will ease the administrative burden on them, they will still be required to keep accurate records of working hours for the purposes of the National Minimum Wage, especially if their employees are paid on an hourly basis.
Employers will still be required to keep records of 48-hour weekly working limit, opt out agreements, health assessments for night workers and length of night work.
Need more information?
For more information on these changes or assistance with updating your policies or contracts, you can contact our Employment Client Services team on employmentinfo@daslaw.co.uk or call on 0344 2640102.