Episode #262
262 Deadlines, Delivery Plans and Data Cars
It’s now just three weeks until the first Work in Progress session of my autumn MasterClass tour, in St Albans. Newcastle is completely sold out. Birmingham and Bristol sold out too, so we’ve secured bigger rooms in both venues, and even those are already over eighty percent full. Southampton and Edinburgh are filling up fast, and there’s still plenty of room in Cardiff, Leeds and Manchester. I’ve also added a third London date, and if you can’t make it to your nearest city, there’s a live virtual MasterClass on 13 October. All the details are at danielbarnett.com/masterclass Away from work, this week I’ve seen Cats at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, which is far superior to the many disappointing productions you may have endured over the years, and certainly to the film. I also saw Death Note The Musical at the Barbican, based on the manga about a notebook dropped to earth by the gods, which gives the man who finds it the power to kill anyone whose name he writes in it. I loved it far more than I expected to. It’s pretty much sold out, but I’d put money on a West End run within the next year or two. The Employment Rights Act Update The biggest development this week concerns zero hours contracts, and I’ll keep it short because the message is simple. On Wednesday, the Government added more than three hundred pages of new material to its zero hours consultation: options assessments on guaranteed hours, reasonable notice of shifts and short-notice cancellation payments, plus two research papers. The consultation closes at midnight on 25 August, ten days after I’m recording this. So if you want to influence the most operationally complicated part of the whole Act, this is your last chance. The detail that jumped out at me is confirmation that agency workers will get broadly the same rights as directly engaged staff. And here’s what employers are most likely to get wrong: assuming this doesn’t apply to them because they don’t use zero hours contracts. The regime will catch low hours workers too, with the qualifying threshold anywhere between eight and forty-eight hours a week still up for grabs, and it reaches agency arrangements. If you use casual, bank or agency staff, audit those arrangements now, and get a consultation response in before the deadline. Second, the Fair Work Agency published its first delivery plan on Monday, covering 2026 to 2027. Nothing in it creates a new legal obligation, but it tells you where enforcement is heading. The Agency’s first-year priorities include building its intelligence and data capability, and, according to early reports, developing digital compliance tools: a payslip explainer, a holiday pay calculator, and possibly a smartphone app letting workers check their payslips. National Minimum Wage officers transfer from HMRC into the Agency in April 2027, and holiday pay enforcement is expected to begin in 2027. Here’s the practical point. The duty to keep six years of holiday records has been in force since April. When holiday pay enforcement starts, those records are the first thing an inspector will ask for, so if yours are patchy, fix that now rather than in 2027. And a quick diary note: from a week on Tuesday, 25 August, trade unions can run electronic and workplace ballots for statutory ballots, including industrial action ballots, where the relevant parties agree. On commentary, two pieces worth your time this week. Lewis Silkin’s note on the Supreme Court’s part-time workers decision, which we’ll come to in a moment, makes the key practical point crisply: the battleground now shifts from causation to objective justification. And Personnel Today has a useful analysis of what the new zero hours options assessments mean for agency workers, and for the businesses that hire them. Employment Law Case of the Week This week it’s Augustine v Data Cars in the Supreme Court. Mr Augustine was a part-time private hire driver averaging around thirty-five hours a week, while his chosen comparator worked full time, averaging over ninety. Data Cars charged every driver the same fixed weekly fee for access to its booking system, whatever their hours, so Mr Augustine paid more per hour to drive than his comparator did. The Supreme Court allowed his appeal, holding that a worker’s part-time status need only be an effective cause of less favourable treatment; it does not have to be the sole cause. The Government deliberately chose not to copy the stricter wording of the European framework, which protected workers treated less favourably solely because they work part time, and it had the power to go further. The existence of other causes may be relevant to justification or to compensation, but it doesn’t stop the right arising. My take: this is an important decision, because it’s the Supreme Court settling years of conflicting authority. But it’s a technical causation point, and for ninety percent of you listening, it will never make a practical difference. The lesson, if you do treat part-timers differently for any reason, is that your defence now lives or dies on objective justification. Zero hours consultation (documents added 12 August; closes 25 August 2026): https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/make-work-pay-ending-one-sided-flexibility-reforms-of-zero-hours-and-similar-contracts Fair Work Agency delivery plan 2026 to 2027 (published 10 August 2026, confirmed via DBT publications page): https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-for-business-innovation-science-and-trade Augustine v Data Cars judgment: https://supremecourt.uk/uploads/uksc_2025_0122_judgment_f8eb0f1fbd.pdf Lewis Silkin, “Supreme Court rules on part-time discrimination” (13 August): https://www.lewissilkin.com/insights/2026/08/13/supreme-court-rules-on-part-time-discrimination Personnel Today, “Agency workers’ inclusion in zero hours reform adds to state of flux”: https://www.personneltoday.com/hr/agency-workers-inclusion-in-zero-hours-reform-adds-to-state-of-flux/ FREE STUFF Employment law updates – www.danielbarnett.com My YouTube channel - www.youtubelegal.co.uk PRODUCTS, MEMBERSHIPS AND COURSES Employment Rights Act update service - https://danielbarnett.com/employmentrightsact/ Join the HR Inner Circle – www.hrinnercircle.co.uk HR Policies - https://danielbarnett.com/policies/ Own-branded email updates for solicitors - www.employmentlawbulletins.com WHO AM I I'm Daniel Barnett, an employment law and HR barrister. I advise and represent clients in employment tribunal litigation. I have my main website and work out of a set of Chambers . I run a membership club for smart, ambitious HR Professionals and present the legal hour on LBC Radio . ♨️ IMPORTANT INFORMATION This podcast is published by (c) Employment Law Services Limited. The information in this video is for general guidance only and, although the presenters and publisher believe it was correct at the time it was recorded, the law may have changed since then. You should always seek your own independent legal advice. Any employment law explained applies to England, Scotland and Wales only. Ask a question about the Employment Rights Act 2025 - www.danielbarnett.com/eraquestion
