The Employment Rights Act 2025: What It Means for Your Agency

The Employment Rights Act 2025 and what it means for your agency

The Employment Rights Act 2025 (ERA 2025) introduces two major changes to UK employment law that directly affect any employer with staff working alone in the field. Estate agencies, letting agencies, and property management firms — where solo viewings with unvetted members of the public are routine — are squarely in scope.

The two critical provisions are:

6 April 2026 (now in force): Sexual harassment disclosures are explicitly classified as protected “qualifying disclosures” under whistleblowing law. Workers who report sexual harassment are protected from detriment and, where dismissal follows, that dismissal will generally be treated as automatically unfair — with no minimum service requirement.

30 October 2026 (projected): The harassment prevention standard escalates from “reasonable steps” to “all reasonable steps,” and third-party harassment liability is reinstated. Employers become liable for harassment of their staff by clients, customers, or other third parties, unless they can show they took all reasonable steps to prevent it.

Why property viewings create specific ERA 2025 exposure

Property viewings meet the definition of lone working under HSE INDG73 guidance: any task performed out of sight or hearing of colleagues qualifies. Every unaccompanied viewing conducted by a negotiator, lettings agent, or property manager falls within that definition.

Industry-wide research gives a sense of scale: SoloProtect’s 2026 Lone Worker Survey, based on 2,500 UK and Ireland frontline workers, found that 56% had experienced verbal or physical abuse in the past 12 months, and 50% had avoided a task or location because they felt unsafe. Those figures span multiple sectors rather than property specifically, but they illustrate the pattern of risk that lone working — including solo viewings — creates.

Separately, section 44 of the Employment Rights Act 1996 already allows an employee to refuse a task where they reasonably believe it presents serious and imminent danger. That existing right sits alongside, and is reinforced by, the new October 2026 duty.

What “all reasonable steps” is likely to require

The “all reasonable steps” standard under ERA 2025 is a materially higher bar than the current “reasonable steps” duty under the Worker Protection Act 2023. While there’s no fixed legal checklist, guidance from employment law commentators consistently points to the same practical areas:

Risk assessment — has the employer conducted and documented a specific risk assessment for lone working scenarios?

Technology deployment — has the employer given staff a practical way to raise an alarm instantly?

Reporting infrastructure — does the employer maintain a confidential channel for harassment disclosures?

Policy documentation — are policies current, distributed, and aligned with EHRC guidance?

Staff training — have employees been trained on safety systems and their reporting rights?

Satisfying this standard is likely to require a documented, operational programme — not a policy filed away and forgotten.

Protected whistleblowing and the April 2026 provisions

From 6 April 2026, a disclosure about sexual harassment can qualify as a protected disclosure under whistleblowing law (amending section 43B of the Employment Rights Act 1996). In practice, this means:

• Protection applies from day one of employment, with no minimum service requirement
• Detriment for reporting harassment is unlawful, and resulting dismissal will generally be treated as automatically unfair
• Employers who cannot show a workable, confidential way for staff to raise concerns are in a weaker position if a claim is brought

The law doesn’t prescribe a specific technology or technical standard for how that reporting channel must work. But a general suggestion box, an informal word with a line manager, or a shared HR inbox is unlikely to give staff genuine confidence to report — particularly where the person they’d be reporting is senior to them. A confidential, structurally separate reporting channel is best practice for meeting the spirit of the duty, even though it isn’t spelled out as a specific legal requirement.

The financial exposure

The changes create several distinct — and in some cases overlapping — sources of financial risk that estate agency owners should be aware of:

Two things worth being precise about here: the HSE fee applies to health & safety enforcement (e.g. a failure to risk-assess lone working under the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999) via HSE inspectors — it’s a separate enforcement route from an employment tribunal claim under WPA 2023 or ERA 2025, which is handled by the EHRC and tribunals, not HSE. They can both apply to the same underlying failure, but they aren’t the same mechanism, so they shouldn’t be presented as a single combined penalty.

For a 10-person agency, The Sentry costs £395 per year — a fraction of the potential exposure from a single successful claim, before legal costs are even factored in.

Why property viewings are specifically classified as lone working

A property viewing meets the criteria HSE INDG73 uses to define lone working:

• The worker is physically separate from colleagues and management
• The worker cannot receive immediate assistance in an emergency
• The worker is in contact with members of the public who haven’t been vetted

This applies to every unaccompanied viewing your team conducts — regardless of whether the property is occupied or vacant, urban or rural, daytime or evening.

Building toward compliance: a realistic timeline

Full ERA 2025 compliance isn’t something that happens overnight. As a rough guide:

Policy drafting and legal review: 2–4 weeks

Technology procurement and testing: 2–4 weeks

Staff training and communication: 4–6 weeks

Embedding a working safety culture: 3–6 months, ongoing

Compliance documentation and audit trail: ongoing from deployment

Agencies that start now have a realistic path to showing active, evidenced compliance well ahead of the October 2026 provisions. Agencies that leave it late risk entering that period with little evidence of proactive action — which is precisely the gap that can trigger a compensation uplift.

How The Sentry supports ERA 2025 compliance

The Sentry was reviewed against the ERA 2025 provisions to help clients stay ahead of both the April and October 2026 changes:

Private incident reporting channel — gives staff a confidential, structurally separate way to report concerns, supporting the spirit of the whistleblowing protections that apply from day one.

Encrypted audit trail — automatically records session activity, building the kind of evidence base that can support an “all reasonable steps” position.

Compliance documentation pack — includes policy templates, staff communication materials, and EHRC alignment mapping, kept current as ERA 2025 obligations are confirmed.

One-hour deployment — removes the technical and logistical barriers that often delay compliance programmes. Most agencies can be operational the same day they sign up.

Rebecca Evans is founder of The Sentry. She spent 18 years working as a letting agent before founding the company.