Why 6 April 2026 Matters

Day 1 SSP. Day 1 Paternity Leave. A brand new enforcement agency with real teeth. The Redundancy Protective Award doubled. And the national living wage is up to£12.71. All of it. The 6th of April. 2026 was the biggest single day in UK employment law in a generation. And this week I want to make sure you actually know what to do about it. Hello, and welcome back to Buzzing About HR. I'm Kate Underwood, HR consultant and founder of Kate Underwood HR, and this is the podcast where we keep things practical, honest, and genuinely useful for small business owners and HR professionals. Right. Today we need to talk about April 6th, 2026. Because if you blinked, you might have missed it. But if you run a business with employees, you really cannot afford to have blinked. 6 April was, and I don't say this lightly, the biggest single day of change in UK employment law for a very long time. Maybe a generation. I've had more messages in the last week than I can count. Business owners saying, is this really all live now? Managers saying, what do I actually do? HR people saying, I'm not sure my director has understood the scale of this. So this episode is the calm debrief. No panic, no overwhelm. Just, here's what changed. Here's what it means for your business right now. And here are five specific actions I want you to do before the end of this month. Hazel, my chief well-being officer, who is a German short-haired pointer, for anyone new here, is currently asleep under my desk and extremely unbothered by employment law reform. Aspirational, honestly. Let's start with the overview, because there's a lot, and I want to make sure you understand the full picture before we go into each change. 6. April 2026 saw a wave of changes from the Employment Rights Act, the biggest piece of employment legislation in decades, land simultaneously. This wasn't a gradual rollout. This was a single day where five significant things changed at once. Here's the list. 1. Day one. Statutory sick pay. The three waiting days are gone. From 6th April, SSP is payable from day one of sickness for eligible employees. 2. Day one paternity and parental leave. Employees no longer need 26 weeks' service before they can take paternity leave or unpaid parental leave. These rights now apply from day one. 3. The Fair Work Agency Goes Live. This is a brand new enforcement body with real teeth, combining HMRC's National Minimum Wage Enforcement, the Gangmasters and Labor Abuse Authority, and the Employment Agency Standards Inspectorate into one agency. 4. The Redundancy Protective Award doubles. If you get collective redundancy wrong, particularly the minimum consultation periods, the maximum protective award has doubled from 90 days pay to 180 days pay. 5. The national living wage rises to£12.71 per hour for workers aged 21 and over. Five things. One day. Let that land for a moment. Let's go through each change in a bit more detail, and I'll tell you what you actually need to do about it. Starting with statutory sick pay. Previously, SSP kicked in on day four of sickness. Days one, two, and three, the waiting days, weren't paid. For lots of small businesses, this acted as a kind of natural filter. It didn't stop genuine illness, but it did mean that very short absences weren't automatically a payroll cost. That's now gone. From 6th April, eligible employees get SSP from day one, which means if someone is genuinely sick for a day or two, SSP is payable. If someone calls in sick on a Monday and is back on Wednesday, that's still an SSP applicable absence. Now, practically speaking, what does this mean for your business? It means your absence management process needs to be more consistent, not less. The temptation might be to think, oh well, it's just a couple of quid, and wave it through. But day one SSP doesn't just change the cost, it changes the conversation. Return to work chats become even more important now. Because that's where you spot patterns, that's where you have the human conversation, that's where you find out whether someone has an underlying issue or whether there's something going on. And for those of you who offer occupational sick pay above SSP, I covered this in a blog last week, link in the show notes. This is a good moment to review your policy and make sure it's still affordable and fit for purpose. The second change is day one paternity and parental leave. Before April 6th, employees needed 26 weeks continuous service before they could take paternity leave or unpaid parental leave. That's gone. From day one, eligible employees have the right to one week or two consecutive weeks of statutory paternity leave and unpaid parental leave, up to 18 weeks per child, up to four weeks per year. For small businesses, this has an immediate practical impact. If you're hiring or if you've recently hired someone, they may now have rights they didn't have last week. What do you need to do? Two things. First, update your family leave policies and your contracts, or, at minimum, review them. To make sure the service requirement language has been removed. If your contracts or handbooks still say 26 weeks' service required for paternity leave, that's now out of date. Second, brief your managers. If someone joins next week and their partner is expecting or they have a child under five, they may come to their manager pretty quickly with a request. Managers need to know what the current position is, not the old one. The third change, and this is the one I think has been underreported, is the launch of the Fair Work Agency. This is a new enforcement body. It's brought together the National Minimum Wage Enforcement Function from HMRC, the Gangmasters and Labor Abuse Authority, and the Employment Agency Standards Inspectorate. Why does this matter for you? Because it's a signal, a very clear one. The government has created a single, well-resourced agency with a mandate to enforce employment rights. It has the power to investigate, to take enforcement action, and to recover unpaid wages. For the vast majority of businesses listening to this, this isn't going to come knocking on your door tomorrow. But it does mean that the direction of travel is clear. Compliance matters. Documentation matters. Paying people correctly and on time matters. And if you've had a slightly casual approach to any of this, I say that without judgment, I know how busy small businesses are. This is a really good time to tighten things up. The basics. Are you paying everyone at or above the new national living wage? Is your payroll processing SSP correctly from day one? Are your contracts up to date? Those aren't complicated questions. They're just important ones. Fourth, the Redundancy Protective Award. This one is for anyone who might be facing redundancies or who's had them in the pipeline. If you're not, feel free to file this away. But do file it away, because you might need it later. The Protective Award is what an employment tribunal can award when an employer fails to follow collective consultation requirements. That means when you're making 20 or more redundancies at one establishment within 90 days, you have to consult with employee representatives for a minimum period. 30 days for 20 to 99 redundancies, 45 days for 100 or more. If you get that wrong, if you skip the process, rush it, or ignore the rules, the tribunal can award a protective award. That award has just doubled. It was a maximum of 90 days actual pay per employee. It is now a maximum of 180 days actual pay per employee. For a business making 20 redundancies with average salaries of 30,000 pounds, that's potentially a six-figure liability if you get the process wrong. I'm not saying this to frighten anyone. I'm saying it because if redundancy is on the table in your business, please, please, get proper advice before you start, not after, before. And the fifth change, probably the most practical for most businesses listening, is the national living wage increase. From April 6, 2026, the national living wage for workers aged 21 and over is£12.71 per hour. The national minimum wage rates for younger workers and apprentices have also increased. If you pay anyone on or near minimum wage, this needs to have been actioned already. If it hasn't been, it needs to be done immediately. This isn't a we'll get round to it situation. This is a legal obligation from 6th April. And while you're checking, make sure you haven't accidentally dipped below the new rate because of salary sacrifice arrangements, deductions, or unpaid overtime. The Fair Work Agency, which we just talked about, has the remit to investigate exactly this kind of thing. Right. Deep breath. Here's your list. I said five actions before the end of the month, and I mean it. These are not optional. These are the five things that will put your business in a much better position from where it stands right now. Action 1. Check your payroll is processing SSP correctly from day one. Talk to your payroll provider or check your payroll software today. Make sure it's been updated to remove the three waiting days. If someone has already been sick since April 6 and wasn't paid SSP from day one, you need to correct that. Action 2. Update your employment contracts and handbook. Remove any reference to 26 weeks' service for paternity or parental leave. Update your family leave section. If your SSP policy section still references waiting days, update that too. You don't need to reissue every contract urgently, but the policy documents you hand to new starters need to reflect the current position. Action 3. Brief your managers. 10 minutes, that's all it takes. A quick team brief, or even a message, covering the main changes. Specifically, day one, SSP. Day one, parental leave, and the new wage rate. Managers shouldn't be caught off guard by an employee who knows their rights better than the manager does. That's an uncomfortable conversation that is entirely avoidable. Action 4. Confirm everyone is being paid at or above£12.71. Run a check. It doesn't need to be complicated. Look at everyone on or near minimum wage and confirm they've been uplifted. Check for any gotchas, salary sacrifice, deductions, rounding. Do it now. Action 5. If redundancies are in sight, get advice now. Not a five-minute Google. Actual advice. Call your HR consultant or employment solicitor before you start any process. With the protective award now at 180 days pay, the cost of getting it wrong is too high to wing it. That is your 6th April debrief. I know it's a lot. I know some of you are listening to this and already thinking about the three other things you haven't done yet. But the good news is this most of what changed on April 6th is manageable if you approach it calmly and methodically, which is what we're doing. You're not behind. You're just catching up. And there's a difference. If you want to work through any of this with me directly, the best starting point is an HR health check. We look at your contracts, your policies, your processes, and we tell you honestly where you are and what needs to happen. There's a link in the show notes. Links in the show notes this week. The HR Health Check booking page, my blog on the new SSP Day One rules, and the blog on statutory pay rates for 2026-27. If you want a full cheat sheet on what rates are in effect right now. And if this episode has been useful, please share it. Forward it to a business owner who might be sitting in that I think I've missed something place. Because this week, a lot of people are. Right? Hazel is awake and would like her walk. And I would like a cup of tea. Thank you so much for listening to Buzzing About HR. I'll see you next Tuesday.