Shift Notice Under the Employment Rights Act 2025

The Employment Rights Act 2025 gives zero-hours and similar workers a legal right to shift notice: reasonable notice of the shifts they're asked to work, reasonable notice when those shifts are cancelled or changed, and a payment when a shift is cancelled, moved or cut short at short notice. The rights are in the Act. What isn't settled yet is how much notice counts as reasonable, how much the payment is, and when it all starts.

This guide sets out what the Act actually says, quoting it, what is still to be decided, and what to change in how you build and publish rotas now so the start date is a non-event. For the wider picture, including guaranteed hours and day-one rights, see our overview of the Employment Rights Act changes.

What the Law Says About Shift Notice Today

Until the new rights are commenced, no law sets a minimum notice period for shifts. If a worker's contract says rotas are published two weeks ahead, that is what you owe them. If it says nothing, you can in principle offer a shift the day before. Two rules apply regardless:

• Rest rules. A short-notice shift still has to respect 11 hours' rest between working days and the other Working Time Regulations limits.
• No exclusivity for zero-hours workers. Since 2015, a term stopping a zero-hours worker from working elsewhere is unenforceable. They can turn your shift down and take someone else's.

What the Employment Rights Act 2025 Adds

Section 2 of the Act inserts new sections 27BJ to 27BO into the Employment Rights Act 1996. Section 3 adds the right to payment. Together they create three duties.

1. Reasonable notice of a shift

Section 27BJ says an employer "must give to a worker reasonable notice of a shift that the employer requests or requires the worker to work". Notice of a shift means notice of "how many hours are to be worked and when the shift is to start and end". So "can you do Saturday?" is not notice of a shift; "Saturday, 10am to 4pm" is.

The test is reasonableness, with a presumption: notice given less than "a specified amount of time" before the shift starts is presumed not to be reasonable "unless the contrary is shown". The specified amount of time will be set by regulations.

2. Reasonable notice of cancellations and changes

Section 27BK extends the same duty to cancelling a shift, changing its start or end time, and cutting its hours with a break. For a shift you requested rather than required, the duty applies once the worker has agreed to work it. There is again a presumption that notice under a specified time isn't reasonable.

3. Payment for short-notice cancellations

Section 3 says an employer "must make a payment of a specified amount" each time it cancels, moves or curtails a qualifying shift at short notice. The Act sets two limits on what regulations can do:

• Short notice can't be defined as more than 7 days. "Regulations… may not specify an amount of time that exceeds 7 days."
• The payment can't exceed the pay for the lost hours. For a cancelled shift, the cap is what the worker would have earned had they worked it.

Regulations may set different amounts depending on how much notice you gave. There are exceptions: agency workers, a shift you only requested unless the worker "reasonably believed" they would be needed to work it, and other circumstances still to be specified.

Who the Shift Notice Rules Cover

Not everyone. The duties apply to workers on:

• zero-hours contracts, and people offered work under a zero-hours arrangement;
• contracts of a description set in regulations that require some work but don't say on what days and at what times (the Act lets regulations define these by pay or hours, which is how low-hours contracts get caught);
• contracts with some guaranteed shifts, for additional shifts outside them. If you ask someone to start earlier or finish later than their guaranteed shift, the extra hours count as a separate shift.

Agency workers are taken out of these duties and given their own provisions in Schedule A1. Salaried staff on fixed patterns are outside the new rights altogether, though their contracts still govern changes to their hours. If most of your rota is zero-hours staff, assume all of it will be in scope.

What Is Still Undecided

Three numbers decide how much this costs you, and none has been set:

1. The notice period. The Regulatory Policy Committee's opinion of 13 July 2026 records that the government consulted on "one, 2, 3 and 4 weeks plus an 'other' option" and named no preferred option.
2. The short-notice window and the payment. The window can't be more than 7 days and the payment can't exceed the lost pay. Beyond that, the government consulted on ranges.
3. Who counts as low-hours. The same opinion records hours thresholds from 8 to 48 hours a week being considered.

Then there's timing. Section 2 came into force on 6 January 2026 only "for specified purposes", and the government's timeline update of 25 September 2026 puts "the right to reasonable notice and short notice payments" among the measures for 2027, adding "timings will be updated after consultation". Treat any article that gives you an exact start date or notice period as guessing.

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Jordan Ingoe, CLI Manchester

How to Get Your Rota Ready Now

Shift notice is one of seven sets of rules a rota has to meet; our guide to rota laws in the UK covers the rest. You don't need the final numbers to prepare. Each of these is worth doing anyway, because they cut last-minute gaps and the disputes that come with them:

1. Find out who is in scope. List everyone on zero-hours or variable-hours contracts and anyone you regularly ask to extend a guaranteed shift.
2. Measure your notice today. For the last two months, how far ahead did each shift go out? If the answer is often "a few days", that is your biggest exposure.
3. Publish further ahead. If the period ends up at the bottom of the consulted range, one week, a rota published two weeks ahead clears it with room for changes. Build from templates so a longer horizon isn't twice the work.
4. Make every shift specific. The duty is about hours, start and end. "Can you do the weekend?" with times agreed later will count from the later message, not the first.
5. Log cancellations and changes with times. For each one, record when the shift was originally notified, when you cancelled or changed it, and the new times. When payments start, that log is the evidence of what you owe and what you don't.
6. Separate "required" from "requested". For requested shifts, the duty bites once the worker agrees. Record the agreement.
7. Cost your current habits. Count last quarter's short-notice cancellations and price them at full pay for the lost hours, the most the regulations can require. That is your worst case.
8. Watch for the government response to the consultation, which will set the numbers.

How TimeTally Helps

TimeTally's rota planner makes the "publish further ahead" step practical:

• Build ahead without exposing drafts. Staff only see shifts once you publish the week, so you can rough out next month and finalise it later.
• Templates and copy-forward. Save a week as a template, or copy the week in view onto the following weeks; days that already have shifts are left alone.
• Specific shifts on staff phones. Every shift carries its start and end time, and you can email staff that their shifts have been published.
• A publish time per week. TimeTally records when each week of a rota was last published.

To be clear about the limits: TimeTally doesn't yet keep a history of every individual change to a shift, so keep a cancellation log alongside it until the regulations are known. It costs £3 per employee per month.

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Planning the festive weeks? The same habits apply to our Christmas rota guide, which covers the 2026 bank holiday dates and how to share out the shifts fairly.

Key Takeaways

• The Employment Rights Act 2025 creates rights to reasonable notice of shifts, of cancellations and changes, and to payment for short-notice cancellations
• They cover zero-hours and similar workers, plus extra shifts outside guaranteed hours; agency workers have separate rules
• The notice period, payment and scope thresholds are left to regulations not yet made
• Short notice can't be set above 7 days, and the payment can't exceed the pay for the lost hours
• The government lists these measures for 2027, with timings to follow the consultation response
• Publishing further ahead and logging every change is worth doing now

Frequently Asked Questions

Sources

• Employment Rights Act 2025, section 2 and section 3 — legislation.gov.uk
• Plan to Make Work Pay and Employment Rights Act: timeline update — GOV.UK
• Ending one-sided flexibility: reforms of zero hours and similar contracts (consultation) — GOV.UK
• RPC opinion: right to reasonable notice of shifts — GOV.UK