Trade unions get a legal right of access to your workplace from October 2026

What is it?

From October 2026 the Employment Rights Act 2025 gives trade unions something they have never had before: a statutory right to request access to workplaces, both physically and digitally, to meet, support, represent, recruit or organise workers and to facilitate collective bargaining. Organising industrial action is expressly excluded. The final Code of Practice and supporting regulations were published on 6 July 2026 and come into force on 30 October 2026. At the same time, employers will be required to give every new employee a written statement of their right to join a trade union, issued alongside the written statement of particulars, with an ongoing duty to remind existing workers at regular intervals.

What does it mean for you?

The access right applies to employers with 21 or more workers, whether or not you recognise a union or have ever had one on site. A union does not need a single member in your workforce to make a request. The process is structured and time bound: requests arrive in writing on a standard template, you have 15 working days to respond, then a 25 working day negotiation period follows. If no agreement is reached, either party can refer the matter to the Central Arbitration Committee, which will proceed on the assumption that some level of access should be granted, so a blanket refusal is unlikely to hold. Model terms contemplate access as often as weekly.

The penalties are designed to be felt. Breaching an access agreement can bring CAC penalties of up to £75,000 for a first penalty order, £150,000 for a second and £500,000 for a third and subsequent breaches under the same agreement, and the CAC can publish the names of those fined. On the union statement, a missed statement can add two or four weeks' pay to another successful tribunal claim, the same mechanism that already applies to missing written particulars.

Two points in your favour. The Government extended the response window from the five days originally proposed to 15 after employers pushed back, and voluntary access arrangements agreed outside the statutory process remain perfectly valid, with ACAS available to help.

How Lansbury HR can help.

We can update your onboarding pack so the union statement goes out with the written particulars from day one, build a simple response process so an access request lands with the right person inside the 15 day window, and review your visitor, site access and communication policies so any negotiation starts from your existing rules rather than a blank page.

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