Few parts of the Employment Rights Act 2025 have been described as a "ban" more often than the zero-hours provisions, and few descriptions are further from the text. The Act does not ban zero-hours contracts. What it does is end what the government calls one-sided flexibility, by giving workers who regularly work hours the right to be offered a contract that reflects them. That right is not in force yet. It is expected in 2027, and much of its detail still depends on regulations and consultation running through 2026. For an employer relying on casual labour, the task in the meantime is not to panic about a prohibition that does not exist, but to understand a duty that is coming and to start mapping who it will catch.
This guide sets out what the new guaranteed-hours duty will require, what remains undecided, and where the compliance risks sit for employers who use zero-hours and low-hours arrangements.
What a zero-hours contract is, and what the Act does not do
A zero-hours contract is an arrangement under which the employer is not obliged to offer any minimum hours and the worker is not obliged to accept any work offered. Used honestly, it is a legitimate way to manage genuinely variable demand, and it remains lawful. The Act does not outlaw it, and it does not force every casual worker onto fixed hours. The persistent claim that zero-hours contracts are being banned is simply wrong, and an employer who restructures the entire workforce on that assumption will have spent effort solving a problem the law does not create.
What the Act actually introduces is narrower and more targeted. It creates a duty on employers to offer guaranteed hours to qualifying workers, a right to reasonable notice of shifts, and compensation where shifts are cancelled, moved or cut short at short notice. It also protects workers from being treated badly for being entitled to an offer or for accepting or rejecting one. The flexibility that a zero-hours arrangement offers survives, but the ability to keep someone permanently on call while they in fact work steady hours does not. A clear zero-hours contract template that reflects this direction of travel is worth having in place well before the duty bites.
The legal framework: a duty arriving in 2027, not a right today
The guaranteed-hours provisions sit in the early sections of the Employment Rights Act 2025, which received Royal Assent on 18 December 2025. They are not commenced. The government's implementation roadmap places them in 2027, with the operational detail to be settled by secondary legislation after consultation during 2026. Anyone telling employees the right to guaranteed hours already exists is describing a future regime, not the current law. Until the regulations are made and commenced, a worker cannot bring a guaranteed-hours claim, and the prudent course is to treat the rules as forthcoming and to prepare rather than to implement.
The shape of the duty is, however, already visible in the Act. An employer will have to offer a guaranteed-hours contract at the end of each reference period to a qualifying worker, meaning a zero-hours or low-hours worker who has regularly worked more than their contracted minimum during that period. Importantly, the duty is to make an offer, not merely to entertain a request. During the Bill's passage the government resisted attempts to dilute the obligation into a right for the worker to ask, so the burden stays on the employer to come forward. The worker, for their part, is free to decline and stay as they are, and if they decline but keep working the same pattern, a fresh offer must follow after the next reference period. For the authoritative running account of what has commenced and what has not, the Acas guidance on the Employment Rights Act 2025 is the reference to check before acting, because the commencement picture continues to move.
What is still undecided, and why it matters
Several of the figures that will determine who qualifies are not yet fixed, and that uncertainty is itself a planning point. The reference period is widely anticipated to be twelve weeks, though the consultation has floated twenty-six and fifty-two weeks as alternatives, and the eventual choice changes which workers build up a qualifying pattern. The low-hours threshold, the level below which a worker counts as low-hours rather than simply part-time, is expected to land somewhere between eight and twenty hours a week, out of a wider range under discussion. The method of calculating the offered hours, whether the mean or the median of the reference period, is also open.
These open questions explain why the sensible response now is measurement, not restructuring. An employer who tracks each casual worker's hours over a rolling twelve-week window can already see who is likely to trigger an offer under the most probable settings, without committing to a contract change before the rules are final. The agency-worker dimension adds another layer, because the duty was extended during the Bill's passage to bring agency workers into scope, with the hirer generally responsible for making the offer. For businesses that flex their headcount through a mix of casual and agency labour, working out where the obligation will fall is the groundwork that pays off when the regulations arrive.
Compliance risks employers should be mapping now
The largest risk is structural: an employer who keeps a small pool of zero-hours workers who reliably take all the shifts is, in substance, running guaranteed hours without the contract. Once the duty commences, that pattern is exactly what triggers an offer, and a business that has built its rota around it may face a wave of offers it has not budgeted for. A second risk is anti-avoidance. Regulations are expected to cap what a tribunal can award where an employer manipulates hours to keep workers below the threshold, and deliberately fragmenting shifts to dodge the duty is likely to be treated as the kind of behaviour the rules are designed to catch.
Detriment and dismissal protection is the third exposure. A worker who is penalised for being entitled to an offer, or for accepting or rejecting one, will be able to claim, and where the detriment is dismissal the compensation tracks the unfair dismissal regime. The extension of most tribunal time limits to six months compounds the point, since it widens the window in which a disgruntled worker can bring a claim. Underpinning all of this is a documentation risk: an employer that cannot show, from its own records, what hours a worker actually worked over the reference period will struggle to defend either the offer it made or the one it declined to make. The reasonable-notice and cancellation-compensation duties raise the same evidential need, because a dispute about a cancelled shift turns on what notice was given and when.
Preparing your contracts on Captain.Legal
Getting ahead of the 2027 changes is mostly about having the right documents ready and the right contracts in use now. On Captain.Legal you choose the type of engagement and answer a short series of questions about hours, pay, place of work and notice, and the template populates accordingly. A zero-hours arrangement can be documented cleanly, so that the genuinely casual nature of the work is recorded where it is genuine, while a worker who has settled into regular hours can be moved onto a full-time contract of employment that states those hours plainly. Having both options drafted and consistent means an employer can respond to the guaranteed-hours duty by issuing an accurate contract rather than scrambling to write one.
The output is an editable Word file and a signature-ready PDF, which lets an HR team keep an editable master and issue a signed copy from the same source. Because the templates are kept aligned with legislation as it commences, the contracts reflect the position in force rather than a pre-reform sample, and they can be updated as the guaranteed-hours regulations are finalised. For a business that runs a fluctuating workforce, the value is in consistency across the contract suite, so the casual, the part-time and the permanent arrangements each say what they should and none of them quietly contradicts the others.
Common mistakes employers are making in 2026
The first mistake is acting as though the guaranteed-hours right is already live and either rushing to convert casual workers or, worse, telling them they have a right they cannot yet enforce. The duty is a 2027 matter, and overstating its current status creates expectations that are hard to walk back. The opposite error is just as common: assuming that because the rules are not in force there is nothing to do, when the reference-period logic means the patterns that will trigger offers are being built up by working practices happening right now.
A third mistake is treating zero-hours and low-hours arrangements as interchangeable with other flexible models without checking which the business actually relies on. Annualised hours, fixed-term and agency arrangements each interact with the new duties differently, and a workforce audit that lumps them together will miss where the real exposure lies. Employers also underestimate the record-keeping burden, keeping only rough rota notes that will not stand up when an offer is challenged. The final misstep is leaving contract templates untouched, so that when the duty arrives there is no clean fixed-term or guaranteed-hours document ready to issue, and the offer ends up being made on paperwork that was never designed for it.
Frequently asked questions
Are zero-hours contracts banned under the Employment Rights Act 2025?
No. The Act does not ban zero-hours contracts, and they remain lawful for managing genuinely variable work. What the Act does is introduce a duty on employers to offer guaranteed hours to qualifying workers who regularly work more than their contracted minimum, along with rights to reasonable notice of shifts and compensation for short-notice cancellations. The flexibility of a true casual arrangement survives, but using a zero-hours label to keep someone permanently on call while they work steady hours is what the reforms are designed to address. Describing the change as a ban misstates what the legislation does.
When does the right to guaranteed hours come into force?
The guaranteed-hours provisions are expected to take effect in 2027, and they are not in force now. They require secondary legislation to commence and to fill in the operational detail, with consultation running through 2026. Until those regulations are made and commenced, a worker cannot bring a guaranteed-hours claim, so the right should be treated as forthcoming rather than current. Employers have a genuine window to prepare, but should be careful not to tell workers a right exists before it actually does.
Who will count as a qualifying worker?
A qualifying worker will be someone on a zero-hours contract, or on a low-hours contract below a defined threshold, who regularly works more than that minimum over a reference period. The exact threshold and the length of the reference period are still being settled by consultation, with the low-hours threshold expected to fall between eight and twenty hours a week and the reference period widely anticipated to be twelve weeks, though longer periods remain under discussion. Agency workers have been brought within scope, with the hirer generally responsible for making the offer. The precise boundaries will only be certain once the regulations are published.
Does the worker have to accept a guaranteed-hours offer?
No. The duty is on the employer to make the offer, but the worker is free to decline it and remain on their existing zero-hours or low-hours arrangement. The right is to receive an offer, not to be forced onto fixed hours. If a worker declines but continues to work a regular pattern over the next reference period, the employer must make a fresh offer after that period. A worker is also protected from being treated unfavourably for accepting or rejecting an offer, so an employer cannot penalise someone for the choice they make.
In what format can I download the contract, Word or PDF?
Both. Every document on Captain.Legal is available as an editable Word file and as a signature-ready PDF. The Word version lets an employer adjust hours, notice provisions or pay details and tailor the contract to the actual arrangement, while the PDF is formatted for signing and filing. Keeping an editable master in Word and issuing the signed PDF from the same source is the cleanest way to ensure that when the guaranteed-hours duty arrives, the contract offered to a worker accurately records the hours they have been working.
What records should I keep to stay compliant?
You should keep accurate records of the hours each casual or low-hours worker actually works, week by week, because the guaranteed-hours duty turns on the pattern of hours over the reference period. Without reliable hours data an employer cannot show why an offer was or was not made, and the same records matter for the reasonable-notice and cancellation-compensation duties, where a dispute will turn on what notice was given and when. Good record-keeping now, before the rules commence, is the single most useful step, since the reference periods that will trigger offers in 2027 depend on working patterns happening today.
How should I prepare before the rules take effect?
The most useful preparation is to audit your variable-hours workforce and track each worker's hours over a rolling twelve-week window, so you can see who is likely to qualify under the expected settings. Map which parts of the business rely on zero-hours, low-hours, annualised or agency arrangements, and assess whether that reliance still matches your actual needs. Make sure you have clean contract templates ready to issue, and update your record-keeping systems so they can evidence hours, notice and cancellations. Preparing in this way lets you respond to the duty with an accurate offer rather than a rushed one when it commences in 2027.