How much notice must you give for a shift?

Written 30 August 2026 · about a 7 minute read

The honest answer is that nobody knows yet, and that is a more useful thing to be told than a number somebody has invented. There will be a legal right to reasonable notice of a shift. The period has not been set, the right is not in force, and several articles currently circulating give a figure that does not appear in the legislation at all. Here is what the Act actually says, and what to do in the meantime.

The short answer

• There will be a right to reasonable notice of a shift, and of any change to or cancellation of one.
• The Act does not state how much notice is reasonable. It leaves the figure to regulations that have not yet been made.
• It is not in force. Acas groups these changes under 2027 and notes the government has not announced when in 2027 most of them will happen.

What the Act actually says

Section 2 inserts a new Chapter 3 into the Employment Rights Act 1996. The mechanism is worth understanding, because it explains why no number exists yet:

• s.27BJ — the right to reasonable notice of a shift.
• s.27BK — the right to reasonable notice of a cancellation or change to a shift.
• s.27BJ(4) — a presumption. Notice is presumed not to be reasonable, unless the contrary is shown, if it is given less than a specified amount of time before the shift is due to start.

So the law does not say “give X hours’ notice”. It says notice must be reasonable, and creates a presumption against you below a threshold that the Secretary of State will set by regulations. Above that threshold, reasonableness is still judged on the circumstances — the specified period is a floor with a presumption attached, not a safe harbour.

What might “reasonable” end up being?

The government consulted on the question, and the options put forward as a starting point for presumed reasonable notice ran from one week to four weeks. That is a consultation position, not a decision, and we quote it only to show the order of magnitude being discussed — which is weeks, not hours.

That matters for planning. If you publish a rota three days out and you have been waiting to hear whether the threshold is 24 or 48 hours, you may be calibrating against the wrong unit entirely.

Note too that the specified period is only a presumption line. Above it, notice still has to be reasonable in the circumstances. A business that habitually publishes at the threshold and no earlier has a weaker story than one that publishes a fortnight out and occasionally slips.

Who it will apply to

Not everyone on a rota. The provisions are aimed at zero hours contracts, contracts entered into under zero hours arrangements, and contracts that require an employer to make some work available but do not specify the days, times or pattern of work.

A salaried supervisor on fixed shifts is not the target. The bank staff, the casuals and the “we’ll let you know Thursday” contracts are. In most shift-based businesses that is a meaningful slice of the rota, and it is the slice that changes most.

The one number that is in the Act

There is a single hard figure in this area, and it is in the payment provisions rather than the notice ones. Under s.27BQ(4), the “short notice” period for the purposes of cancellation payments is capped at seven days.

That does not tell you what the notice period will be. It does tell you the outer bound of what regulations can impose in the related payment regime — the window cannot be set at a month. If you want a number to plan against today, a fortnight’s published rota sits comfortably outside anything the Act permits to be specified. See shift cancellation payments for how that provision works.

When it lands, and a correction worth making

Acas places these changes in 2027 and says the government has not announced when in 2027 most of them will happen.

A number of articles — including some from software vendors — put shift notice and cancellation payments at October 2026. That date belongs to a different set of provisions: the expanded sexual harassment prevention duty, third-party harassment liability, trade union access and notification rights, which take effect on 30 October 2026. They are not the shift rules.

We mention it because if you have already been told to prepare for an October deadline, you have been given the wrong deadline, and you may have been given it by someone selling you the fix.

What to do before the rules land

The temptation is to wait for the number. That is a mistake, for a reason that has nothing to do with compliance theatre: whatever the period turns out to be, the obligation will be evidential, and evidence cannot be created retrospectively.

1. Publish further ahead than you need to. If you currently publish a week out, get to two. It costs nothing and it puts you outside any plausible threshold.
2. Record when the rota went out, and to whom. Not “we published on Thursday” — the actual timestamp.
3. Record changes after publication separately from the rota itself. The right attaches to changes and cancellations, not just to the original notice.
4. Find out which of your workers are in scope now, while it is an administrative question rather than an urgent one.
5. Stop relying on the group chat. A shift change announced in a WhatsApp group is a change nobody can evidence six months later.

The mechanics of that evidence are the subject of a separate page: proving you gave notice.

Sources

• Employment Rights Act 2025, s.2 — shifts: rights to reasonable notice
• s.3 — payment for cancelled, moved and curtailed shifts
• Employment Rights Act 2025 — Acas

If regulations have been made since this was written and we have not updated it, tell us at info@opsicle.co.uk.