Consultation closed, next steps unclear

The right to switch off in 2026: what the consultation means for you

Updated 6 October 2026

A legal right to switch off would, in plain terms, give you: (1) a statutory right to ignore work messages outside your contracted hours without fear of detriment; (2) an entitlement to at least eleven hours of daily rest and twenty-four hours of weekly rest that an employer cannot contract you below; (3) the option to claim unpaid rest as time off in lieu where the employer has contacted you out of hours; and (4) protection from being disciplined, marked down or selected for redundancy because you have disconnected. The current consultation, closed on 24 September 2026, asks whether the right should be a day-one right, who should pay for the device and the connection, and what the remedy should be when the right is breached.

What is the right to switch off, in plain English

The phrase comes from a French law, the loi El Khomri of 2016, which obliged employers with fifty or more staff to negotiate a policy on how out-of-hours contact would be handled. Ireland followed in 2021 with a code of practice rather than a statute, and several EU member states are now debating whether to follow. The UK version being consulted on by the Department for Business and Trade is a hybrid. It is being framed as a right to disconnect from work-related electronic communications, not as a fixed cap on weekly hours.

For you, the difference matters. A cap on hours is enforced through the Working Time Regulations 1998, and that already gives you a weekly limit of forty-eight hours averaged over a reference period, plus the rest entitlements described below. A right to disconnect is enforced through a new statutory duty on the employer to have a written policy and to respect your decision to ignore messages. Breach of the policy would, under the consultation proposals, be treated as a breach of the employment contract that you could take to Acas early conciliation and on to a tribunal.

The consultation document, Smarter Regulation: proposals to support growth, was published on 14 July 2026 and closed on 24 September 2026. The summary of responses is expected in December 2026. No draft regulations have been laid before Parliament as of 6 October 2026.

What you already have, before any new law

Until a right to switch off is on the statute book, three existing rules do most of the work.

First, the Working Time Regulations 1998 give you eleven hours of rest in any twenty-four, an uninterrupted twenty-four hour rest in any seven days, and a twenty minute break where your working day is longer than six hours. Adult workers can opt out of the forty-eight hour weekly limit in writing, but you cannot opt out of the daily and weekly rest. If your employer emails you at 23:00 and expects a reply before 09:00, the time in between is not automatically your rest period, but the cumulative pressure may amount to a breach that you can raise as a grievance.

Second, your contract may already place limits on out-of-hours contact. Check your statement of employment particulars, the section that has been a day-one right since the 2020 reforms and is repeated in the Executive Employment (Allocation of Tips, Awards and Gratuities) Act 2023 amending rules. If your contract says your normal hours are 09:00 to 17:30, contact outside that window is not, on its face, a disciplinary issue if you do not respond. The catch is that many contracts contain a wider additional hours as required clause. That clause is enforceable only if the additional hours are reasonable in volume and in timing.

Third, the Equality Act 2010 bites where constant out-of-hours contact is linked to a protected characteristic. Carers, disabled workers and those undergoing fertility treatment or pregnancy-related illness are more likely to be harmed by a culture of always-on. The employer has a duty to make reasonable adjustments under section 20 of the Act, and a blanket refusal to let a disabled worker mute Slack at 22:00 is a textbook example of indirect disability discrimination.

What the consultation proposes, and what it leaves out

Read the consultation itself for the full text, but the headline proposals are these.

The Department is consulting on a duty on employers to have a written right-to-disconnect policy, drafted in consultation with workers or their representatives. The threshold for coverage is not yet settled: the consultation asks whether the duty should apply to all employers, to those with ten or more employees, or to those with fifty or more. Smaller employers may benefit from a lighter-touch version or a sectoral code.

Remedies are the contested part. The consultation floats four options: an informal process through Acas; a formal grievance-style process with internal review; a tribunal route modelled on the working time protections, with a maximum compensatory award capped at the same level as unfair dismissal; and a regulatory route through a new arm of the Fair Work Agency. The most likely outcome, on the Department for Business and Trade's recent form, is a tribunal route capped at the unfair dismissal compensatory award, currently capped at the lower of a fixed statutory maximum and fifty-three weeks of gross pay. The fixed maximum is revised each year and for 2026 sits at £118,223.

What the consultation does not propose is a cap on the number of hours an employer can demand in any given week, a right to be paid extra for out-of-hours contact, or a right to compensation for the fact of being contacted. Those omissions matter. A right to ignore the message is not a right to be paid for the time spent reading it. If you are not paid for out-of-hours contact that leads to work, your route is the unpaid wages claim with its three-month time limit, not the new right to disconnect.

How the new right would interact with zero-hours and hybrid work

The consultation is explicit that zero-hours workers would be covered, but the practical effect is muddled. A zero-hours worker has no contracted hours, so the boundary between on and off is whatever the policy says. The Irish code of practice deals with this by requiring the employer to specify in the policy the time before and after a shift during which the worker is not expected to be reachable. If the UK model follows that, you would have, for example, a window of one hour either side of a booked shift, with the rest of the day off. Contact within the window would be paid; contact outside it would be at the worker's discretion.

For hybrid workers the policy is sharper, because the employer has a stronger interest in defining the boundary. The government's Smarter Regulation paper is studiously neutral on whether the home is covered, but the most defensible drafting is to cover all work-related electronic communications wherever received, including on a personal device. Without that, an employer can argue that your personal phone is your own concern.

A point that the consultation is silent on is the device and the connection. The 2020 case of Lock v British Gas and the more recent Whitehouse v Blake line of authority suggest that, where the employer requires you to have a smartphone and to remain logged in, the time spent reading and responding to messages is working time for the purposes of the National Minimum Wage. The right to switch off, if it lands, would sit on top of that.

What your employer can and cannot do while the consultation is being digested

Until regulations are made and commenced, the current law applies. That means your employer can: email you at any hour; expect a response only during your contracted hours or where it is reasonable in the circumstances; require you to be on call if your contract says so and you are paid for the on-call period; discipline you for failure to respond if your contract or a properly drawn policy puts an obligation on you to do so.

Your employer cannot: dock your pay for ignoring out-of-hours messages; select you for redundancy because you have refused to be available 24/7; treat your refusal as gross misconduct where your contract is silent; use the additional hours as required clause to require a volume of out-of-hours contact that is unreasonable in itself; or fail to provide the rest entitlements under the Working Time Regulations.

It is worth noting that the government's separate consultation on tipping, which closed on 29 September 2026, and the Fair Work Agency's expanded remit from 30 October 2026, both bear on this area. The Agency will have powers to investigate and enforce, but those powers begin life limited to holiday pay, minimum wage and statutory sick pay. A right to switch off breach would, if enacted, sit outside those three.

How to raise a problem now, before the law changes

Start with the policy, not the principle. Ask your employer, in writing, whether they have a right-to-disconnect or out-of-hours contact policy. If they do, raise a grievance if it is being ignored. If they do not, suggest one. Many trade unions and employer bodies have template policies that you can adapt; the TUC's Right to Disconnect model is a reasonable starting point. The TUC published a draft model agreement in March 2025 that several large employers have already signed up to, including a number of FTSE 100 firms.

If the problem is pay for time worked, the unpaid wages claim is your route. The time limit is three months from the date the wages should have been paid, and Acas early conciliation extends the deadline in the usual way. If the problem is detrimental treatment for refusing out-of-hours contact, that may be an unlawful deduction from wages, a breach of contract, or, where the contact is linked to a protected characteristic, a discrimination claim under the Equality Act 2010.

Where the conduct is so persistent that it amounts to a constructive dismissal, the time limit is three months from the date of termination of employment, calculated by reference to the last day of the notice period or the date on which you leave. Acas early conciliation is the gateway to the tribunal in all of these claims.

What to do in the meantime

Six practical steps while the consultation is being digested.

1. Read your contract, including any additional hours clause and any mobility clause, and check whether the policy of the employer says anything about out-of-hours contact. If the contract is silent, write to HR asking for clarification in writing. Their reply, or the absence of one, is evidence.

2. Keep a log. The day, time, channel and content of each out-of-hours contact, and your response. A spreadsheet with columns for date, time sent, time read, action taken and whether you were paid is the basic tool. This is the evidence you will need for an unpaid wages claim or a discrimination claim.

3. Pay attention to the consultation response from the Department for Business and Trade, expected in December 2026. Subscribe to the Department's email alerts so that you see the response when it lands.

4. If you are a member of a trade union, raise the issue with your rep. Your employer has a duty from 30 October 2026 to give you a written statement of your right to join a union, and from the same date the ballot and notice thresholds for industrial action are reduced. A collective approach is the most efficient route to a workplace policy.

5. If you are not a member, consider joining. The cost is usually under £15 a month and the legal cover is more substantial than any policy you can buy privately.

6. If your health is being affected, see your GP and ask for a fit note. This triggers the statutory sick pay from day-one rules and, where the cause is work-related, may be the basis of a personal injury claim that is outside the tribunal system.