Employers across Great Britain face a tougher duty to stop sexual harassment, including by customers and clients, from 30 October. The power to define what counts as "reasonable steps" exists in law from that date, a year earlier than the government's roadmap says.
Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
In short. From 30 October 2026, two sections of the Employment Rights Act 2025 raise the legal bar on workplace sexual harassment: employers must take "all reasonable steps" to prevent it, not merely reasonable ones, and are liable if they fail to stop a customer, client or other third party harassing staff [1]. A third section, commencing the same day, creates a ministerial power to specify exactly what counts as a reasonable step [4]. The Department for Business and Trade's own factsheet says the regulations that power would make are not expected until "2027/28 (after consultation)" [5]. The department's own implementation roadmap, republished 14 October 2026, still lists the power itself as a "2027" measure [6] - a year after the commencement regulations that actually bring it into force on 30 October 2026 [1]. Two documented mistakes: four stars.
Employers in Great Britain have owed a duty to take "reasonable steps" to prevent sexual harassment of their staff since 26 October 2024, when the Worker Protection Act 2023 inserted section 40A into the Equality Act 2010 [7]. From 30 October 2026, nine days from publication, that duty gets harder to meet. Section 20 of the Employment Rights Act 2025 inserts a single word into section 40A: "reasonable steps" becomes "all reasonable steps" [2]. An employment tribunal weighing a claim will now ask not whether an employer did something, but whether it did everything reasonably available to it.
Section 21, commencing the same day, goes further. It inserts new subsections into section 40 of the Equality Act, making an employer liable if it "permits" a third party, such as a customer or client, to harass one of its employees in the course of their employment, unless it took all reasonable steps to prevent it [3]. This is not a wholly new idea. The original Equality Act 2010 contained third-party harassment protection, in subsections (2) to (4) of section 40, until they were omitted from 1 October 2013 by the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013 [8]. Thirteen years on, the 2025 Act brings a version of it back, verified directly against the commencement regulations that confirm 30 October 2026 as the date both sections take effect [1].
A power that exists before anyone knows how it will be used
The same commencement order brings a third provision into force on the same day: section 22, which inserts new section 40B into the Equality Act. It gives a minister the power to make regulations specifying particular steps - risk assessments, published policies, complaint-handling procedures among them - that are to be treated as "reasonable" for the purposes of the section 40A duty [4]. Read on its own, section 40B looks like the mechanism that will eventually tell employers exactly what they need to do. Read against the department's own published timeline, it is not that yet.
The Department for Business and Trade's factsheet on this specific power, dated 15 January 2026, is explicit about the sequence. Under the heading "When will these changes come into force?", it gives a single line: "Regulation defining 'reasonable steps': Expected Commencement 2027/28 (after consultation)" [5]. It adds that "a call for evidence has been conducted and responses are being analysed," and that any specific requirements will be consulted on again before the regulations themselves are made [5]. The factsheet does separately confirm that the Equality and Human Rights Commission "has updated their technical guidance on sexual harassment and harassment in the workplace to support employers with the preventative duty" [5] - non-statutory guidance, not the regulations section 40B itself contemplates.
So the gap is not that nothing exists to help employers. It is that the specific, legally defined list of "reasonable steps" that section 40B was written to produce will not exist for well over a year after the higher duty it supports becomes enforceable. Until the regulations arrive, what counts as a reasonable step in a given workplace is a question for an employment tribunal to decide case by case, informed by guidance that carries no statutory force.
The department's own roadmap has not caught up
The department's "Implementing the Employment Rights Bill" roadmap, the same document this site has checked against a different Act section in an earlier piece, groups the Act's provisions by the point at which they take effect. Under "Measures that will take effect in 2027" it lists: "introducing a power to enable regulations to specify steps that are to be regarded as 'reasonable', to determine whether an employer has taken all reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment" [6]. That sentence describes section 22 and section 40B exactly. But the power itself, not the regulations it would eventually produce, commences on 30 October 2026, under commencement regulations made on 1 October 2026 [1]. The roadmap's own gov.uk page carries a publication date of 14 October 2026, two weeks after the commencement regulations existed and thirteen days before they take effect [6]. It still has not been corrected.
This matters beyond the single date. The roadmap is the document employers, HR advisers and journalists use to plan around this Act. A reader relying on it would conclude the enabling power for "reasonable steps" regulations is still a year away, when the power that creates it is already law a year earlier than stated, even though the regulations it enables remain exactly where the roadmap says.
The claims, tested
| The document's own statement | What we found, checked 21 October 2026 | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| The roadmap: "introducing a power to enable regulations to specify steps that are to be regarded as 'reasonable'... " is listed under "Measures that will take effect in 2027" [6] | Section 22, which creates that exact power, commences 30 October 2026 under S.I. 2026/1065, made 1 October 2026 [1] [4] | The roadmap is wrong by a year, and was republished two weeks after the commencement regulations existed without correcting it |
| The factsheet: the regulations defining "reasonable steps" have "Expected Commencement 2027/28 (after consultation)" [5] | No regulations under section 40B have been made; the power to make them exists from 30 October 2026, while the higher "all reasonable steps" duty and third-party liability become enforceable the same day [1] | A stricter, litigable duty arrives with no statutory specification of what satisfies it, for at least a year |
Credit where due
Two things here are not the department evading scrutiny. The factsheet does not hide the gap; it states the 2027/28 timeline plainly and names the reason, a consultation still under way [5]. And the higher duty is not being imposed with no support at all: the Equality and Human Rights Commission's updated technical guidance, referenced directly in the factsheet, gives employers a practical starting point even without the force of regulations behind it [5]. The problem this piece documents is narrower than "nothing has been done": it is that the department's own planning document has not kept pace with its own commencement regulations, and that a stricter legal duty takes effect with its defining regulations more than a year out.
Verdict
Four stars, from two documented mistakes. Strengthening the sexual harassment duty and reinstating third-party liability are substantive, enforceable changes, not symbolic ones, and the department has been transparent that the detailed "reasonable steps" regulations will take time. But a roadmap republished nine days before these provisions commence should have told employers correctly when the enabling power itself arrives, and it still has not. And a tribunal-enforceable duty to take "all reasonable steps" from 30 October, with the regulations meant to specify what that requires not expected until 2027/28, leaves employers and tribunals filling in the legal definition of a current legal duty for well over a year.
The star score counts two documented mistakes: (1) the Department for Business and Trade's implementation roadmap, republished 14 October 2026, lists the enabling power for "reasonable steps" regulations (Employment Rights Act 2025, section 22) as a measure taking effect "in 2027", when the commencement regulations made 1 October 2026 bring that power into force on 30 October 2026, a year earlier; (2) the regulations that power exists to produce are not expected until "2027/28 (after consultation)" per the department's own factsheet, meaning the stricter "all reasonable steps" duty and third-party harassment liability become legally enforceable on 30 October 2026 with no statutory specification of what satisfies them. Two falls in the 1 to 3 band: four stars; the bands are on the ratings page. Checked directly against the Act's own commencement regulations, the department's January 2026 factsheet and its roadmap as republished 14 October 2026, all fetched 21 October 2026. The document is tracked in the Daily Register; a published "reasonable steps" regulation or a corrected roadmap will get a diff entry.
Sources
- The Employment Rights Act 2025 (Commencement No. 6 and Transitional and Saving Provisions) Regulations 2026, S.I. 2026/1065 (made 1 October 2026). https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2026/1065/made
- Employment Rights Act 2025, section 20, legislation.gov.uk (checked 21 October 2026). https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2025/36/section/20
- Employment Rights Act 2025, section 21, legislation.gov.uk (checked 21 October 2026). https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2025/36/section/21
- Employment Rights Act 2025, section 22, legislation.gov.uk (checked 21 October 2026). https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2025/36/section/22
- Department for Business and Trade, "Factsheet: Power to make provision about 'reasonable steps'" (PDF, 15 January 2026). https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6968f4653f43dfed1544b0d8/preventing-workplace-sexual-harassment-enabling-regulations-about-reasonable-steps.pdf
- Department for Business and Trade, "Implementing the Employment Rights Bill: roadmap (web version)" (republished 14 October 2026). https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/implementing-the-plan-to-make-work-pay-and-employment-rights-act/implementing-the-employment-rights-bill-roadmap-web-version
- Equality Act 2010, section 40A, legislation.gov.uk (checked 21 October 2026). https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/section/40A
- Equality Act 2010, section 40, legislation.gov.uk (checked 21 October 2026). https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/section/40