Direct answer
Since 6 April 2026, the Employment Rights Act 2025 has required employers to keep records showing they complied with workers' annual leave and holiday pay entitlements, for at least six years. For dismissals from 1 January 2027, the qualifying period for unfair dismissal falls from two years to six months. Both sets of records can live in the tools you already use.
The shorter qualifying period makes probation and absence records matter much sooner in someone's employment. Your rota, payroll and HR tools can hold both, as long as each record has one home and someone other than you can produce it.
The law doesn't prescribe a format. Section 35 of the Act says records can be kept "in such manner and format as the employer reasonably thinks fit". What it does require is that they are adequate to show compliance, which a rota screenshot and a payslip on their own usually aren't.
This guide is not legal advice; read Acas on the Employment Rights Act 2025 and section 35 on legislation.gov.uk. We build the record-keeping. Acas, GOV.UK or your employment adviser confirms what you must keep.
The dates
If you followed it as the Employment Rights Bill, some dates moved after it became law. These are the government's and Acas's dates as of 24 October 2026.
Swipe or scroll to compare the columns.
| Date | Change that affects your records | Source (checked 24 Oct 2026) |
|---|---|---|
| 6 April 2026 | Keep annual leave and holiday pay records for at least six years | Acas (updated 20 Oct 2026); legislation.gov.uk, s.35 |
| 6 April 2026 | Statutory sick pay from the first day of sickness, with the lower earnings limit removed | Acas |
| 6 April 2026 | Paternity leave and unpaid parental leave become day-one rights | Acas |
| 7 April 2026 | Fair Work Agency set up; it enforces rights including holiday pay and sick pay | Acas |
| 1 October 2026 | Time limit for most employment tribunal claims rises from three to six months | Acas |
| 1 January 2027 | Unfair dismissal qualifying period falls from two years to six months, for dismissals from this date; the compensation limit is removed | GOV.UK timeline update; Acas |
Two things follow from the table. Most tribunal claims now have six months rather than three, and a state body, the Fair Work Agency, now enforces holiday pay. And from January, someone who joined in the summer of 2026 can have unfair dismissal protection before Easter 2027.
The records to keep, and for how long
Section 35 adds a new regulation 16B to the Working Time Regulations 1998. It requires records "adequate to show whether the employer has complied" with a specific list of entitlements, kept for six years from the date each record is made. Not keeping them is an offence under regulation 29. In practical terms, the list covers:
- Statutory leave entitlement for each worker for each leave year: the basic four weeks and the additional 1.6 weeks (regulations 13 and 13A).
- Holiday pay: what was paid for each period of leave and how it was worked out (regulation 16).
- Pay for untaken leave when someone leaves, for standard workers and for irregular-hours and part-year workers (regulations 14 and 15E).
- Accrued leave for irregular-hours and part-year workers, which builds up with the hours actually worked (regulation 15B).
A record set that would usually be adequate looks like this:
Swipe or scroll to compare the columns.
| Record | Per worker, per leave year | Keep for |
|---|---|---|
| Leave year start date and contract type (fixed hours, irregular hours, part-year) | Yes | Six years from when it was made |
| Entitlement, with the calculation shown | Yes | Six years |
| Each period of leave: dates, days or hours, approved by whom | Yes | Six years |
| Holiday pay for each period: rate used and what went into it | Yes | Six years |
| Hours worked, where leave accrues from hours | Yes | Six years |
| Carry-over into the next year, and why | Where it applies | Six years |
| Payment for untaken leave on leaving | On leaving | Six years |
Six years from the date the record is made means a record written in April 2026 has to survive until at least April 2032. Check that your rota, payroll and HR providers keep history that long, and that the records don't depend on one person staying in the job.
Where they should live: rota, payroll, HR tool
Most small employers already split this data across three places:
- The rota or scheduling app knows the hours worked and the days booked off.
- Payroll software knows what was paid, including holiday pay.
- An HR tool, or a spreadsheet, holds contracts, entitlements, leave requests and approvals.
Each one holds part of the answer, and none of them, by default, shows the whole thing: entitlement, leave taken, pay for that leave and the calculation behind it. The gaps tend to be the same everywhere:
- Holiday pay calculated in payroll from a rate someone typed in, with no record of how the rate was worked out.
- Irregular-hours accrual done in a spreadsheet that one person maintains.
- Leave approved by text or WhatsApp and never entered.
- History lost when you change rota or payroll provider and only export current balances.
The cheapest fix is to pick one system as the home for each record and connect the others to it. If your HR tool can hold entitlements and approvals, let it be the home, and have an integration copy hours from the rota and holiday pay lines from payroll into the same worker record. If none of your tools can, a small records app that pulls from all three and keeps a dated, read-only history is often less work than changing provider. Rules do the arithmetic; nothing here needs AI.
When you change provider, export the full history, not just balances, and store it somewhere you'll still be able to open in 2032.
Probation and absence records before 1 January 2027
The six-month qualifying period applies to dismissals from 1 January 2027. The government's unfair dismissal factsheet says protection will extend immediately to employees who already have six months' service at that date. So the records that support a fair process need to exist from the start of employment, not from the second year.
Records worth keeping in one place per employee:
- Start date, probation length and the probation review dates.
- Notes from each review: what was agreed, targets set, support offered.
- Absence: dates, reason given, return-to-work conversations. With statutory sick pay payable from the first day since April 2026, the payroll side of each absence also needs to line up with the absence record.
- Warnings, investigations and outcomes, with dates.
The aim is plain: if a decision is challenged, someone can produce the history without relying on memory. A rota or HR tool can send reminders for probation reviews, and a simple form can capture the notes against the employee record so they don't stay in a manager's notebook.
A quarterly check someone other than the owner can run
A record-keeping system you never test will drift. Once a quarter, ask someone who doesn't normally do payroll or HR to run this check, and time it:
- Pick three workers at random, including one on irregular hours if you have any.
- For each, produce this leave year's entitlement and the calculation behind it.
- List every period of leave taken, with the approval.
- For one period of leave, show the holiday pay and how the rate was worked out.
- For anyone who left this quarter, show the payment for untaken leave.
- Check that records from at least a year ago can still be opened.
- For anyone in probation, show the dates and notes of the last review.
Write down what took longest and what was missing. If the answer to any step is "ask the owner", that's where the record-keeping needs work.
Limitations
Dates and duties were checked on Acas, legislation.gov.uk and GOV.UK on 24 October 2026. Several 2027 measures still depend on consultations and regulations, so check the official pages before relying on a date. This guide describes record-keeping, not what the law requires of a particular employer.
