September brings the first full rewrite of the Acas Code in 17 years, two big consultations and a run of useful tribunal and court decisions.

With third party harassment and the stronger sexual harassment duty landing on 30 October 2026, now is a good time to check your house is in order.

The Acas Code: the biggest shake up in 17 years

Acas has published a draft new Code of Practice on Disciplinary and Grievance Procedures for consultation. It is the first full rewrite since 2009. Nothing is final yet. But there are some significant changes for HR.

Informal resolution moves into the Code

Right now, the encouragement to resolve issues informally sits outside the statutory Code. The draft brings it in, with dedicated sections on employers and workers trying informal resolution before formal procedures begin.

That could give informal resolution more legal weight when tribunals look at compliance with the Code and any uplift to compensation.

It changes your paperwork too. A disciplinary invitation would need to explain what informal steps have already been taken, or why none were appropriate. Workers raising formal grievances would face a similar expectation.

Suspension gets a tougher test

The draft is clear. Suspension should only be used where necessary and in limited circumstances. That reflects the direction of existing case law, but puts the message much more firmly into the Code. Suspension should not be the automatic response to an allegation.

More on equality, training and mediation

There are new standalone sections on reasonable adjustments, manager training, and mediation and facilitated conversations. Mediation is the one to watch. It is absent from the current Code, and the draft expressly contemplates pausing formal procedures to allow it to take place.

The draft also replaces “employee” with “worker” in most places. That could broaden the Code’s reach. But the statutory 25% uplift remains available only for employees.

What about AI?

The draft Code says nothing about AI in grievance situations. That is despite AI generated grievances and responses becoming a very real issue for HR teams.

Acas has not ignored it altogether. The consultation asks whether the guidance that sits alongside the Code, which is not statutory, should address the use of AI in disciplinary and grievance procedures.

Interesting given the recent case of Hancox v Sutherland & Ors where a litigation was criticised by a Judge for filing a ‘entirely unacceptable’ skeleton running to 300 pages.

The consultation closed on 23 September 2026.

Part time workers: why treating everyone the same may not be enough

Treating everyone the same sounds safe. But the Supreme Court has confirmed in Augustine v Data Cars Ltd that identical treatment can still be less favourable treatment of a part time worker.

Mr Augustine was a private hire driver working an average of 34.8 hours a week. Data Cars charged every driver the same £148 weekly fee to access its booking system, whatever their hours. His full time comparator worked more than 90 hours a week.

The fee was the same. The impact was not. Spread across fewer hours, it meant Mr Augustine paid proportionately more and took home proportionately less.

The test is now clearer

Under the Part-Time Workers (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Regulations 2000, part time workers are protected against less favourable treatment on the ground that they work part time.

Earlier authority suggested part time status had to be the sole reason for the treatment. The Supreme Court has rejected that. Part time status now only needs to be a significant or effective cause. Other reasons can be operating alongside it.

That potentially makes claims easier to bring. An employer cannot necessarily point to another reason for an arrangement and say part time status was irrelevant.

There is an important safety valve. Unlike most direct discrimination claims under the Equality Act 2010, less favourable treatment of part time workers can be objectively justified.

The right to be accompanied: don’t ask, don’t get?

Picture it. You are called into a meeting with no warning about what it is for. You leave dismissed. Have you been denied the right to be accompanied? Perhaps surprisingly, not necessarily.

That was the position in Wolfe v Taka Mayfair Ltd. Mr Wolfe said he was called into a meeting without warning or explanation and dismissed at the end of it. He argued his statutory right to be accompanied had been breached because he was not given the chance to bring anyone.

The Employment Appeal Tribunal disagreed. The right under section 10 Employment Relations Act 1999 only arises where the worker asks to be accompanied. Mr Wolfe had not asked, so there was no breach. It made no difference that he may not have understood the nature of the meeting until it was too late.

What the right actually covers

The statutory right applies to disciplinary and grievance hearings that fall within the legislation, including relevant appeals. The worker can choose:

• a work colleague;
• an appropriately certified or trained trade union representative; or
• a trade union official.

The union does not need to be recognised by the employer. The worker does not need to be a member.

The companion can address the hearing, put the worker’s case and confer with them. They cannot answer questions on the worker’s behalf. If the chosen companion cannot attend, the worker can propose a reasonable alternative time within five working days.

The legal minimum is not good process

The EAT made clear that section 10 does not require an employer to explain in advance that a meeting is disciplinary, or to tell the worker they can bring a companion.

But that does not make a surprise disciplinary meeting good practice. The Acas Code expects employees to be told in writing about the allegations against them, and their right to be accompanied, before a disciplinary meeting. Failing to follow a fair process can matter a great deal when a tribunal looks at whether a dismissal was fair.

Equal pay: Government consults on a major rethink

Equal pay sits in a slightly unusual corner of UK equality law. The Equality Act 2010 prohibits discrimination because of a range of protected characteristics. But the specific equal pay regime only deals with sex.

It works through an implied “equality clause” or “equality rule”. This modifies contractual pay terms where a worker shows they are doing equal work to a comparator of the opposite sex, and the employer cannot show the difference is due to a material factor which is not sex.

There is no equivalent regime for race or disability. An employee who believes they are paid less because of race or disability must bring an ordinary discrimination claim, with different rules and remedies. The Government is now consulting on whether that should change.

Extending pay protection

The headline proposal would extend key features of the equal pay regime to race and disability. Employees could compare themselves with colleagues doing like work, work rated as equivalent, or work of equal value.

Crucially, tribunals could modify contractual terms after a successful race or disability pay discrimination claim. So the remedy could go beyond compensation and actually correct the discriminatory pay term. That would be a significant shift.

And there is more

Other proposals include:

• requiring employers to disclose pay information in job adverts or before interview;
• strengthening requirements for equal pay audits and job evaluation schemes;
• bringing back statutory questionnaires for pay discrimination claims;
• a new Equal Pay Regulatory and Enforcement Unit with potentially substantial enforcement powers; and
• giving tribunals more flexibility to extend time limits in equal pay cases.

There are also proposals on outsourcing, and on some limited circumstances where hypothetical comparators could be used.

Third party harassment is coming back: are you ready?

A customer harasses one of your team. You did not encourage it. You did not know it would happen. The person responsible does not even work for you. Could your organisation still be liable? From 30 October 2026, potentially yes.

New third party harassment provisions mean an employee can bring a claim where they are harassed in the course of their employment by someone such as a customer, client, contractor, service user or business contact, and their employer failed to take all reasonable steps to prevent it.

There is no “three strikes” rule. Similar legislation, repealed in 2013, required previous incidents before liability arose. This time, a single incident could potentially be enough.

Think beyond your own workforce

The obvious sectors are hospitality, retail and healthcare. But the risk is much wider. Your people may meet contractors on site, entertain clients, attend conferences, work in serviced offices or visit customers in their homes.

Your harassment risk assessment should identify those situations and consider what could reasonably be done. That might include:

• making clear to customers and service users that harassment of staff will not be tolerated;
• including provisions on harassment in commercial contracts;
• requiring contractors to remove individuals who behave inappropriately;
• reducing lone working in higher risk environments;
• providing alarms or code words for employees visiting customers; and
• making sure employees know to report harassment by third parties, not put up with it as “part of the job”.

You cannot fully control a customer’s behaviour. That does not mean you can do nothing to reduce the risk. That is likely to be the key distinction under the new regime.

Training cost clawbacks: when does repayment become a restraint?

Training repayment agreements are everywhere. You invest in someone’s training. They agree to repay some or all of it if they leave soon after. Simple enough.

But the Court of Appeal decision in Geeks Ltd v Watts is a reminder that protecting your investment can tip into an unlawful restraint on someone’s ability to leave.

An £8,108 bill on an £18,000 salary

Mr Watts joined Geeks as a trainee engineer on £18,000. He signed an agreement recording a “Training Cost Debt” of £8,108. It was recoverable if he left within 12 months, then reduced gradually over the following 18 months.

He resigned after eight months for a £30,000 job. Geeks wanted its £8,108 back.

The Court of Appeal said no. The clause was an unreasonable restraint of trade and unenforceable.

The agreement did not actually stop Mr Watts working elsewhere. It even said expressly that it did not restrict other employment. That did not matter. The financial consequences of leaving were significant enough to restrict his freedom in practice.

Would your agreement pass the test?

• Are you recovering genuine training costs? Geeks included artificially calculated mentoring costs and the employee’s own salaried study time.
• Is repayment proportionate to salary? The Court was influenced by the size of the debt compared with Mr Watts’ relatively low earnings.
• Does the amount reduce fairly over time? Nothing was written off during Mr Watts’ first year.
• When does repayment apply? The clause caught almost every departure except redundancy, including circumstances potentially outside the employee’s control.
• Was there a real chance to consider the agreement? Bargaining power and the circumstances in which it was signed were relevant.

Two lines of attack

Repayment clauses in employment are vulnerable in two ways:

1. As a penalty clause. They impose a detriment for leaving that is out of proportion to the employer’s legitimate interest in recovering its training investment.
2. As an unreasonable restraint of trade. As in Geeks, the repayment is a real life deterrent to freedom of movement.

Belief discrimination: where are we now?

The Employment Appeal Tribunal’s decision in University of Bristol v Miller is not particularly surprising. But it is a useful reminder of where the law has landed when an employee’s conduct is rooted in the manifestation of a protected religion or belief.

The starting point: Higgs

In Higgs v Farmor’s School, the Court of Appeal confirmed the position. If an employer treats an employee less favourably because of something they said or did which is a manifestation of a protected belief, meaning it has a close connection to that belief, that is direct religion or belief discrimination unless the treatment is justified.

An employer can act where it is responding to something sufficiently objectionable about the manner in which the belief was manifested. But any restriction on manifesting a protected belief must be objectively justified. In practice, that means asking whether the employer’s response pursued a legitimate aim and was proportionate.

University of Bristol v Miller

Dr Miller, a Professor of Political Sociology, was dismissed after public comments expressing his anti-Zionist beliefs and strongly criticising named Jewish student groups. The tribunal found his particular anti-Zionist belief was protected under the Equality Act 2010, and that his dismissal was direct belief discrimination.

The tribunal did not say everything he said was protected. Some language directed at named student groups went beyond manifestation of the belief and amounted to blameworthy misconduct.

But the dismissal was driven substantially by comments that did manifest his protected belief. So the University had restricted that manifestation and needed to justify it. It could not. Dismissal was disproportionate when a lesser sanction would have been enough. The EAT upheld that central conclusion.

After Higgs and now Miller, proportionality should sit at the heart of your decision making.

Whistleblowing: context is everything

When deciding whether a protected disclosure has been made, you may need to look beyond the particular words an employee later chooses to rely on. That is especially true where the disclosure went to an external body rather than the employer. That was the issue in the EAT decision in Jackson v Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police.

Mr Jackson, a senior police officer, sent three lengthy reports to the police watchdog alleging cronyism and cover ups within the force. He later argued that selected passages in those reports were protected disclosures.

The problem? He could not simply carve those passages out of the wider material they sat in.

External disclosures face a higher hurdle

The whistleblowing legislation deliberately makes it harder to gain protection for some disclosures made outside the employment relationship.

For a disclosure to the employer, the information does not have to be substantially true. The worker does not even need to reasonably believe it is substantially true. Broadly, the worker must reasonably believe the disclosure is in the public interest and that the information tends to show one of the specified types of wrongdoing.

The bar is higher for a disclosure made externally to a prescribed regulator, as in Jackson. Section 43F of the Employment Rights Act 1996 also requires the worker to reasonably believe that the information, and any allegation in it, is substantially true.

The EAT confirmed this means looking at the disclosure in context. Mr Jackson could identify particular parts of his reports as the disclosures he relied on. But he could not divorce them from the surrounding material relevant to them.

Acas Code uplifts: when 25% becomes 2.5%

A 25% uplift on a £50,000 award is significant. A 25% uplift on £1.7 million is something else entirely. That was the issue in Sheikholeslami v University of Edinburgh.

Under section 207A of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992, tribunals can increase compensation by up to 25% where an employer has unreasonably failed to comply with the Acas Code of Practice on Disciplinary and Grievance Procedures. But 25% is the ceiling, not an automatic penalty.

In Sheikholeslami, the tribunal first considered a 25% uplift appropriate, given how serious the employer’s procedural failings were. But once compensation came to more than £1.7 million, it stood back and looked again. It cut the uplift to 2.5%.

The EAT agreed. Tribunals can consider whether the financial outcome is proportionate when deciding what uplift is “just and equitable”.

Back to basics

The Acas Code applies to disciplinary situations, including misconduct and poor performance. It does not apply to redundancy dismissals or the expiry of fixed term contracts. Before awarding an uplift, the tribunal should ask:

1. Did the Code apply?
2. Was it breached?
3. Was that breach unreasonable?
4. If so, what uplift is just and equitable?

Serious failures can still be expensive. 25% uplifts were awarded in Rentplus UK Ltd v Coulson, where the disciplinary process was effectively predetermined, and in Hargreaves v Wright Foundation Research Ltd, where there was no disciplinary hearing at all.

From January 2027, the compensatory cap for ordinary unfair dismissal is removed. The sums at stake may become considerably larger. Sheikholeslami suggests tribunals can temper the uplift where 25% would produce a disproportionate result.

Sexual harassment training: when does it go stale?

Most employers know sexual harassment training matters. The harder question is this. When does perfectly good training stop being good enough?

It matters for two reasons. First, from 30 October 2026, employers will be required to take “all reasonable steps” to prevent sexual harassment under the preventative duty. Second, taking all reasonable steps is the defence available where an employer would otherwise be vicariously liable for harassment related to any characteristic committed by an employee or, from October, a third party.

So simply pointing to some training is not necessarily enough.

When training goes stale

The warning comes from Allay (UK) Ltd v Gehlen. That case was about racial harassment, but the lesson applies equally here.

The employer had delivered equality and diversity training around two years before the harassment happened. The Employment Appeal Tribunal still found the training had become “stale”. It had also been relatively brief and superficial.

That does not create a legal rule requiring harassment training every two years. There isn’t one. The question is whether, in the circumstances of your organisation, you have taken all the reasonable preventative steps available to you. Effectiveness matters more than a date in the diary.

Watch for the warning signs

If inappropriate jokes or “banter” are creeping back in, managers are not challenging behaviour, or people seem unclear how to report concerns, waiting for your scheduled refresher may be hard to justify.

Revisit training when risks change too. That might be rapid recruitment, changes in management or working practices, or an incident or complaint.

And don’t forget managers. They need to know what sexual harassment looks like. They also need to know how to challenge it, respond properly to allegations and model the standards expected of everyone else.

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