Welcome to this month's briefing for HR teams and in-house employment counsel – bringing you this month’s employment law highlights in an easy-to-read package.

Early conciliation 

The Government has announced that the length of the Acas Early Conciliation process is to be doubled from 6 to 12 weeks. The change takes effect from 1 December 2025, and according to the explanatory memorandum published with the regulation making the change, reflects Acas’ limited resources, and is designed to give a greater chance of settlement. When the Employment Rights Bill is enacted, the time limit for almost all claims will be extended to six months. From an employer’s perspective, these extensions taken together mean that the period “on risk”, in which the employer cannot close its books, will become materially longer. 

Employment Rights Bill

The Bill remains in Parliament, where the debate on how best to enact the manifesto commitment to “day one unfair dismissal” continues. The House of Lords has repeatedly sent the Bill back to the Commons, arguing that a shortened service requirement (e.g. six months instead of the current two years) would be a far simpler way of balancing enhanced protection for employees with business’ need to be able to test new hires. The Government’s preferred approach of granting the right to bring unfair dismissal claims from day one, but creating a new statutory probationary period of, probably, nine months, seems relatively more complex. It would likely need some form of more attenuated termination procedure to allow a proper chance to test new recruits and exit poor performers, but the precise shape of such a process appears challenging to draft without giving rise to more litigation that might further stretch the Employment Tribunal system.

Six consultations on somewhat less contentious aspects of the Government’s Make Work Pay’ agenda have been launched: on bereavement leave, enhanced protections for pregnant women, the right of access of unions to workplaces, the duty to inform workers of the right to join a union, how to give employment rights to unpaid carers, and on electronic and workplace balloting for statutory union ballots.

Restrictive covenants

There have been two interesting judgments on different aspects of restrictive covenants. In the first case, the High Court has upheld a suite of three-year restrictive covenants in the context of a corporate transaction. Litigation on covenants arising from corporate deals is relatively rare, so this is an interesting example of how the courts approach covenants in a transactional context. We have covered the decision in more detail in this article.

In the second case, the High Court has refused to grant a non-compete injunction against a sales executive working in the bespoke menswear sector.  He had originally been employed under a contract that contained a six-month post-termination non-compete provision. It was generally well-drafted and, importantly, was not expressed to bite if the employee wanted to compete in territories he had not covered for the business, or in new lines of work. 

Some years later he entered into a new contract without those limitations, and where the restricted period was doubled to twelve months. At trial, the employer’s witnesses struggled to explain the changes. They also sought to argue that twelve months was necessary because it was linked to their customers' buying habits, but could not point to conclusive data to support this. 

Unsurprisingly, given these facts, and the employee’s overall poor treatment, the Court concluded the restriction was too wide and unenforceable. 

The lessons for clients are that:

• while twelve-month restrictions can sometimes be enforceable, this depends on the facts and the drafting;
• restrictions ned to be carefully tailored to particular roles, rather than rolled-out wholesale;
• documentary evidence needs to be carefully marshalled; and
• witnesses need to be helpful and honest.

Proposed UK immigration changes: Home Affairs Committee inquiry on planned increase to qualifying period for settlement

The UK Government’s Immigration White Paper, published in May, proposed an increase to the qualifying residence period for settlement (or indefinite leave to remain) from five years to ten years. In advance of a Government consultation, the Home Affairs Committee has opened an inquiry on this proposal, and is inviting stakeholders to submit evidence by 2 December 2025.  

Michael Shaw, Jessica Jim and Samir Abugideri provide further details in our article.

Earned settlement: consultation paper launched

In May 2025, the UK Government published an Immigration White Paper setting out proposed changes to the immigration system, including an intention to increase the qualifying residence period for settlement (also known as indefinite leave to remain or ILR) from 5 to 10 years. The White Paper also introduced the concept of “earned settlement”, whereby migrants could reduce the 10-year qualifying period by meeting additional criteria in relation to their contributions to and integration into UK society.  

The Home Office has now published a public consultation on the “earned settlement” model. 

In our article, we comment on the key features of the suggested framework and the impact that these proposals will have on affected individuals.