Sep 25, 2026 · 30 min · 8 segments
The government's plans to reform zero and low-hours contracts are beginning to take shape, but significant uncertainty remains. What will the new rules on guaranteed hours mean in practice? How much…
Elaine HutleyHost
Jo MosleyHost
Well, you might remember that you mildly admonished me a couple of months ago when I said I didn't want to talk about reforms to zero hours contracts.
And I got myself very cross when we discussed it first time around, which, having checked, was at the start of 2025.
I would never admonish you, Jo, but I do remember you getting very cross at the time.
And I think if memory serves me right, we concluded that the legislation is highly complex and that there were lots of important bits of information that we didn't know at that time, which needed to be filled in by secondary legislation.
But before we get to that, would you agree that these changes seem to be rattling employers more than most of the other changes under the Employment Rights Act?
And I think for those who realise that they will be affected, then yes, and rightly so, because it is a huge issue.
For others who it doesn't necessarily affect, or perhaps those who haven't yet realised it will affect them or to what extent, then not necessarily.
Oddly, I think reducing unfair dismissal rights to six months is still getting big headlines but by now most employers that we work with at least seem to have already got to grips with that one and amended their contract and changed their practices but I personally think that for any employer who engages staff on casual contracts so not just zero hours but any kind of casual contract this is one to be really focused on.
Yeah yeah and there's a lot of argy-bargy in the press at the moment about whether these reforms are going to be really expensive for business so we've got the government who's put out its own estimates i think it was last month now and they suggest that the impact of this change could cost employers around 1.1 billion per year business groups are saying that this is going to worsen the job crisis and may lead to redundancies and then you've got the unions who say that businesses are scaremongering i assume they're putting the government in that category And reckon that the estimated cost to business assume that they won't be making any changes to their scheduling practices.
Yeah, but I mean, you know, Jo, that we recently held roundtables to talk through the consultation paper and to help employers understand the details of the proposals and what the implications of the proposals could be to the extent that we know about them, because there's still so much we don't know.
And those discussions were really enlightening and they confirmed that this is going to be immensely costly for businesses, not only in terms of the direct costs, but also in terms of the administration costs of just gathering data, monitoring data.
I think it's true to say that, as you mentioned, that we don't have a complete picture yet about how these reforms are going to work and how much changes business are going to have to make.
But as you say, we do now have some additional information because the government consulted on its plans over the summer.
But before we do that, could you perhaps recap for our listeners even what changes are being made to people working under zero or low hour contracts?
Well, you might remember that you mildly admonished me a couple of months ago when I said I didn't want to talk about reforms to zero hours contracts.
And I got myself very cross when we discussed it first time around, which, having checked, was at the start of 2025.
I would never admonish you, Jo, but I do remember you getting very cross at the time.
And I think if memory serves me right, we concluded that the legislation is highly complex and that there were lots of important bits of information that we didn't know at that time, which needed to be filled in by secondary legislation.
But before we get to that, would you agree that these changes seem to be rattling employers more than most of the other changes under the Employment Rights Act?
And I think for those who realise that they will be affected, then yes, and rightly so, because it is a huge issue.
For others who it doesn't necessarily affect, or perhaps those who haven't yet realised it will affect them or to what extent, then not necessarily.
Oddly, I think reducing unfair dismissal rights to six months is still getting big headlines but by now most employers that we work with at least seem to have already got to grips with that one and amended their contract and changed their practices but I personally think that for any employer who engages staff on casual contracts so not just zero hours but any kind of casual contract this is one to be really focused on.
Yeah yeah and there's a lot of argy-bargy in the press at the moment about whether these reforms are going to be really expensive for business so we've got the government who's put out its own estimates i think it was last month now and they suggest that the impact of this change could cost employers around 1.1 billion per year business groups are saying that this is going to worsen the job crisis and may lead to redundancies and then you've got the unions who say that businesses are scaremongering i assume they're putting the government in that category And reckon that the estimated cost to business assume that they won't be making any changes to their scheduling practices.
Yeah, but I mean, you know, Jo, that we recently held roundtables to talk through the consultation paper and to help employers understand the details of the proposals and what the implications of the proposals could be to the extent that we know about them, because there's still so much we don't know.
And those discussions were really enlightening and they confirmed that this is going to be immensely costly for businesses, not only in terms of the direct costs, but also in terms of the administration costs of just gathering data, monitoring data.
I think it's true to say that, as you mentioned, that we don't have a complete picture yet about how these reforms are going to work and how much changes business are going to have to make.
But as you say, we do now have some additional information because the government consulted on its plans over the summer.
But before we do that, could you perhaps recap for our listeners even what changes are being made to people working under zero or low hour contracts?
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