Out-of-hours contact

Right to disconnect: what the October 2026 law gives you

Updated 6 October 2026

From 26 October 2026 , the right to switch off becomes a day one legal right for workers at firms with 50 or more employees. The change is set out in the Employment Rights (Amendment, Protection from Workplace Harassment and Right to Switch Off) Act 2026, which received Royal Assent earlier this year. The law gives you four concrete rights: a written policy you can actually read, the right to ignore out of hours contact, protection from being punished for switching off, and a route to the employment tribunal if your employer breaches the policy. This guide explains what is in scope, what the new policy must contain, what counts as contact, and what you can do if your boss keeps WhatsApping you at half nine on a Sunday.

Who is covered by the right to switch off from 26 October 2026

The new right applies to workers, not just employees, which means it covers zero hours, agency, and casual workers as well as permanent staff. The trigger is the size of your employer, not your job. A business is in scope if it employs 50 or more workers on the day the right comes in, or if it had 50 or more in the previous financial year. The count includes employees and workers, but not genuinely self employed contractors. Part time staff each count as one, not a fraction.

If you work for a small employer with fewer than 50 workers, the statutory right does not apply to you from 26 October 2026, although your existing rest break rights under the Working Time Regulations still do. Many small firms are expected to introduce their own policies to attract and keep staff, and Acas has published template wording for businesses of any size to use voluntarily.

The government has signalled that the 50 worker threshold could fall in a later phase, but no date is set and there is no consultation on this yet. For now, around 4.5 million workers are expected to fall into scope on day one, based on ONS business population estimates.

What the written right to switch off policy must contain

Your employer must produce a written policy on out of hours contact and give every worker a copy before 26 October 2026. Acas has published a statutory code of practice on the right to switch off, and the policy your employer writes must be consistent with that code. The policy has to cover several things in plain English:

• The hours when you are not expected to check or reply to work messages, including evenings, weekends, annual leave, and rest days.
• Which roles, if any, are exempt because of an objective business need, such as on call doctors or incident response engineers, and what compensatory rest looks like in those roles.
• How out of hours contact will be monitored, who is responsible for limiting it, and the steps managers must take before sending a non urgent message outside contracted hours.
• What a worker can do if they receive contact outside the agreed hours, including a clear right not to respond and a clear route to raise a concern.
• How the policy will be reviewed, and the named person or team accountable for compliance.

The policy must be more than a box tick. Acas guidance makes clear that a one line statement along the lines of staff should not check email after 6pm is not enough. The code expects to see the why, the how, and the consequences. If your employer fails to produce a policy, that is itself a breach of the Act and a day one claim in the employment tribunal.

What counts as out of hours contact under the new law

Out of hours contact means any work related communication sent to you outside your contracted working hours. The law does not name a specific channel, so it covers email, Teams, Slack, WhatsApp, phone calls, text messages, and even tagging you in a shared document. The clock starts the moment your contracted hours end and runs until they begin the next working day, or until the start of the next shift for shift workers.

For most workers the question will be simple. If you finish at 5pm and your manager pings you at 9pm, that is out of hours contact. If you are rostered Tuesday to Saturday and your manager messages you on Sunday, that is out of hours contact. If you are on annual leave or off sick, any non urgent work message is out of hours contact, and urgent messages are tightly defined in the Acas code.

There is no fixed number of late messages that makes contact unreasonable. The test is whether the contact is reasonable in volume, frequency, and timing, having regard to your role, the size of the team, and any on call arrangement. Repeated messages, even short ones, are still contact, and a single lengthy email at 11pm can be more intrusive than a one line ping. Context matters, and so does the cumulative pattern across weeks and months.

Your right to ignore out of hours messages

The new right is a legal right not to respond, not a polite suggestion. From 26 October 2026, you can decline to read, reply, or action work messages outside your contracted hours without facing a detriment. A detriment means anything that disadvantages you, including a warning, a poor performance score, being passed over for promotion, being removed from a project, or being disciplined for slow response times.

This is a day one right. You do not need to have worked somewhere for a qualifying period to use it, and there is no minimum service requirement for the basic right to ignore. You also do not need to tell your employer in advance that you are exercising the right. The protection kicks in automatically when the message is sent outside your contracted hours and the policy has been issued.

There is one practical point. If the message is genuinely urgent and relates to a matter that could not reasonably wait, such as a major systems outage or a safeguarding risk, the Acas code accepts that an out of hours response is reasonable. Your employer must show the urgency, not just assert it. The test is what a reasonable employer would have done in the same circumstances, and the burden of proof is on them once you have raised a concern.

How to raise a concern if your employer ignores the right

The Act creates a two step process. The first step is internal. Your employer's written policy must name a person or route for raising concerns, and most policies will mirror the existing grievance procedure. A informal chat with your line manager is a sensible starting point if you feel safe doing so, but the formal route should always be available.

If internal action does not resolve the issue, the second step is the employment tribunal. The claim is for breach of the right to switch off, and it is an independent claim, which means you do not have to leave your job to bring it. The compensation framework is built on three bands based on the seriousness of the breach, the impact on you, and whether the employer has already put a policy in place. Vento-style injury to feelings uplift is not part of the formula, but the upper band can reach the equivalent of a few months of pay for sustained or aggravated breaches.

You should also keep a log of any out of hours contact, including the date, time, channel, length of message, and what you were asked to do. Screenshot messages in real time, with the timestamps visible, and save them somewhere outside the work platform. If the messages come through a work device, your personal phone, or a personal account, save them in both places where you can.

What the right to switch off does not change

Several existing rights continue to apply alongside the new right. The Working Time Regulations 1998 still give you 11 hours of rest in every 24, one full day off each week, and 20 minutes of rest in any shift longer than six hours. The right to switch off is a workplace culture tool and does not replace the 48 hour average weekly limit, the right to paid annual leave, or the right to refuse opt out of the weekly limit if you are below the 48 hour average.

The right is also not a ban on overtime. Your employer can still ask you to work extra hours, and you can still agree to work them. The difference is that they cannot penalise you for saying no, and they cannot build a culture where the expectation of yes is so strong that no is not a real option. If your contract says you will work such hours as are reasonably required, that wording has to be read against the new right from 26 October onwards.

Finally, the right does not create a right to be paid for the time you spend reading a message, unless the volume and pattern of contact is so high that you can argue you are working, in which case a separate unpaid wages claim is possible under the Employment Rights Act 1996 section 23. The two claims can sit side by side for the same conduct, and you can bring them in the same tribunal if needed.

What to do in the meantime

Five practical steps before and after 26 October 2026:

1. Ask your employer in writing for a copy of the right to switch off policy if you have not seen one by mid October. Putting the request in email creates a record and starts the clock on any breach claim.
2. Turn off work notifications on your personal devices after hours, and mute non urgent work channels. The right is stronger if you can show that you have actively chosen not to engage with the messages.
3. Keep a clear log of any out of hours contact, with dates, times, channels, and screenshots. If the pattern is sustained, this becomes the basis of a tribunal claim.
4. If your manager keeps contacting you out of hours, raise a formal concern in writing and copy in HR or the person named in the policy. Treat the first message as a prompt to remind the business of its own policy.
5. If internal action does not work, talk to an adviser about a claim to the employment tribunal. The time limit is three months from the act complained of, with a possible extension for a later series of acts, and a free advice session at a Law Centre or Citizens Advice can be booked quickly.