UK TUPE Reform 2026: Government Calls for Evidence on Worker Rights Changes. Ministers ask for evidence about the future of TUPE
The government has started a “call for evidence” to help them reform the rules that protect workers’ rights when businesses move, which are known as TUPE.
The Plan to Make Work Pay, which included the Employment Rights Act 2025, said that TUPE rules would be made stronger as part of the effort to protect workers’ rights.
The Next Steps document from October 2024 was the first place to say that there will be a demand for evidence.
Unions, firms, and workers are being encouraged to give the government proof to help ministers “better ensure TUPE is easy to follow for businesses to support growth and create a better environment for businesses to expand, sell, or merge.”
The government also said it would “think about how to make the current set of rights and protections for people who are subject to TUPE stronger to make the workforce more stable during transitions” and “come up with policy ideas for reform.”
The deadline for the call for evidence is July 11, 2026.
The Employment Rights Act doesn’t directly modify TUPE. But a lot of the steps to strengthen workers’ rights will have an effect on TUPE rules.
For instance, the six-month qualifying time for protection from unfair dismissal will make transferees (the firm that gets personnel) more likely to be liable, especially if there are already disciplinary and grievance mechanisms in place. Transferees would have to take this into account when doing due diligence and figuring out costs.
Also, people who switch jobs may have used dismissal and re-engagement to change the terms of their employment after a TUPE transfer. But the Act’s “fire and rehire” rules, which will go into effect in January 2027, may make this kind of activity illegal.
The Act also tries to stop a “two-tier workforce,” which is when public sector workers and private sector workers work on the same contract but have different terms and conditions. This will start to happen in October 2026.
Legal experts suggest that the two-tier workforce safeguards will necessitate equal treatment for workers who provide outsourced services. This is important because it could go beyond what employers usually think of when they hear the term “TUPE.” Lewis Silkin, a law firm, said, “For companies that do public sector outsourcing, this raises important questions about how the terms of employment are set up, not just when the job is transferred but throughout the life of the contract.”
The government might also try to fix long-standing problems with TUPE that have nothing to do with the Employment Rights Act. Some of these are: not knowing if employees can work for more than one company; and rules against modifying terms and conditions while there are often good commercial reasons to make them the same as those of the current workforce.
Businesses are also frustrated by the current requirement for a “economic, technical, or organisational” (ETO) rationale in a redundancy situation. Lewis Silkin noted that this meant that layoffs were put off until right after the transfer, when the new employer could use an ETO reason to carry them out, “even when there is a clear ‘place of work redundancy,’ which is especially clear because of a ‘offshoring.'”
The company argued it would be better if this were taken away or if the government made a law that outgoing firms might use incoming employers’ ETO reasons to do the redundancy before the transfer.
But not all employment lawyers agreed that changes were needed. Anthony Wilcox, a partner in employment law at TWM, said, “The TUPE rules have always had a reputation for being hard to understand, but over time they have changed and become much more well-known.” They are a solid balance because they safeguard workers’ rights when businesses change hands or services are outsourced, but they also let employers make the changes that their businesses need.
“With major changes to employment law being planned and put into effect, and the effects of these changes on businesses and the employment tribunal system still largely unknown, it’s not clear that this is the best time to think about making changes to TUPE.”