CIPD Webinar (member-exclusive): Employment Rights Act 2025 - How to handle new trade union rights of access

Sally Sellwood (SW): Hi, and thanks Ben for that.

Yes, so as Ben's explained, we are still waiting sort of the final pieces from the government about this. So I'm going to run through what the changes actually are that we're anticipating on the 30th of October. And then I think what we're all really interested to hear is Cilinnie’s insight into how these access rights might work in practice.

So the current position is that there's no independent right for trade unions to access workplaces. Any access that a union might have will depend either on a recognition agreement, a voluntary access agreement that might have been negotiated, or where there are individual union members within the workplace. It's not technically access in the same way.

So the Employment Rights Act has introduced a change to the Trade Union and Labour Relations Consolidation Act 1992, and it's giving independent trade unions a right to request access, as Ben said, for the purposes of meeting, supporting, representing, recruiting or organising workers or facilitating collective bargaining. It's not dependent on there being any recognition agreement or as Ben has said, any union members in the workforce. It's a new, an independent right of access.

So moving on to the next slide, the things to know, it'll apply to organisations with 21 or more employees. So very small organisations won't be impacted, certainly not immediately. It's a right that relates to independent trade unions and the premise of the legislation and it's set out in the code of practice as well is that voluntary access arrangements are the first course of action. The union can't go straight to the CAC and make a statutory request. There needs to have been a voluntary request, for voluntary access first.

As Ben has already mentioned, it's physical and or digital access. So digital access can be in the form of emails, messaging apps, I suppose the sort of full remit of digital platforms that are available. And the other thing that I thought was important to stress, even though I've talked about the purposes that the union can request access for, it's not about organising industrial action. It's much more about the support of employees.

So there's a very clear statutory timetable set out in the regulations that have just very recently been confirmed. So there are two sets of regulations that underpin the change. There's the trade unions right to access workplaces regulations which set out all of the time periods and then there is another set of regulations which covers the required information. And as Ben has said, there's additional non-statutory guidance which will accompany the code of practice and we haven't had that yet.

So if we move on to the next slide, that's probably, I've set out a flow chart that we have prepared and at some point, I think the link to that is going to be shared. It's a member resource that we've got available on our website as well. So don't worry that it's very tiny here. It's quite a complicated process, but essentially the trade union will make a voluntary request for access. Employers have 15 days to respond. That response can take a number of forms, it can be agreement, there can be additional negotiation for a further 25 days. The employer can reject the request or simply not respond. That can trigger the ability for the union to go to the CAC to make a statutory request. There are various provisions for more time, either by restarting the access request process and ultimately you've got 55 days, the union has 55 days from the date of the original access request to apply to the CAC.

So I just had a few final points to make. It seems from what I've read of the code of practice and the regulations, that there are going to be very few circumstances in which access will be refused. There are some technical provisions if other unions are already recognised or if there is another access request in process and then there are national security reasons and then certain physical limitations to workplaces may reduce the availability of access.

And the other thing that I think we need to consider in all of this is the interplay with other pieces of legislation, including data protection, health and safety legislation, and also something that's occurred to Ben and I, in looking at the Employment Rights Act more generally is the new requirement to prevent harassment by third parties, this is a situation where you've got third parties coming into your workplace potentially. Is the access agreement somewhere where you need to consider something like that?

As I said, that's a very, very quick canter through the legal provisions. We don't really know how it's going to play out in practice, but Cilinnie, who has huge amount of experience in this is now going to share some of her experience in the context of some of the aspects of these changes.