Right to request predictable hours dropped (for now)

Blog

11.09.2024

The Government has confirmed that the Workers (Predictable Terms and Conditions) Act 2023 will not be coming into force as planned this Autumn.

Passed by the previous Conservative government, the Act gave workers with uncertain hours the right to request predictability about their working days and times, the number of hours worked, and the length of their contract (with contracts of 12 months or less to be considered inherently “unpredictable”). The Act received Royal Assent in September last year and ACAS consulted on an accompanying draft Code of Practice.

Although all this has now been scrapped, we understand the Act’s intention to bring more security and certainty for workers very much remains on the current Government’s agenda. Provisions seeking to reduce precarity around hours/income for atypical workers are likely to feature in some form in the forthcoming Employment Rights Bill and Make Work Pay programme (for more information see here).

The Act had sought to address the imbalance and challenge, often part of zero-hours or other atypical arrangements, whereby workers are unable to rely on having work but are expected to be free (often at short notice) to do work when needed. The difficulties of trying to manage your life and finances with such a model are obvious, and this reality was recognised by the Taylor Review, which flagged it as a concern as far back as 2017.

On the dropping of the Act, it is reported that a spokesperson for the Department of Business and Trade has said: "We will introduce a new right to a contract that reflects the number of hours regularly worked as part of our significant and ambitious agenda to ensure workplace rights are fit for a modern economy, empower working people and deliver economic growth."

What this new right will look like is not yet clear, but could include, for example, provisions giving forward-looking contractual protection to the number of hours worked by a worker, calculated using a “look back period” of some form. In any case, it is expected to be more robust than the (now scrapped) Act’s protections which the Government inherited, which some criticised as “toothless” in that employers had a relatively wide discretion to reject a worker’s application for predictability. Even at the time of its introduction, the Act was described by the Government in relatively low-key terms, as a route by which workers could “start productive conversations” with employers about their working patterns.

The current Government has been very clear about its ambitions in this area more generally and have set out a wide range of reforms which will significantly change the landscape of workers’ rights, namely:

Banning exploitative zero-hours contracts.
Ending "fire and rehire" and "fire and replace".
Making parental leave, sick pay, and protection from unfair dismissal a day one right for all workers (subject to probationary periods to allow employers to assess new hires).
Removing the lower earnings limit and the waiting period for Statutory Sick Pay.
Making flexible working the default from day one for all workers.
Strengthening protections for new mothers, making it unlawful to dismiss a woman who has had a baby for six months after her return, other than in exceptional circumstances.
Establishing a Fair Work Agency to strengthen enforcement of workplace rights.
Updating trade union legislation, removing restrictions on trade union activity and simplifying the statutory recognition process.

Since taking office, the Government has been clear that it is both “pro-worker” and “pro-business” and is seeking to work in partnership with industry and trade unions. Ensuring enhanced workers’ rights are robust while remaining pragmatic for businesses will undoubtedly be a challenge and we wait with interest to see how the proposals take shape.

This publication is a general summary of the law. It should not replace legal advice tailored to your specific circumstances.