Small-business HR compliance checklist (UK)

Written statement of particulars — a day-one right

Since 6 April 2020, every employee and worker has the right to a written statement of employment particulars on or before their first day. This is not the same as "we'll sort the contract out in the first month" — the core statement is due before work starts, and it must cover more than the old regime required, including:

• Names of the parties, start date and (for employees) date continuous employment began.
• Pay, pay intervals, and hours — including which days, and whether they may vary.
• All paid leave entitlements (holiday, but also things like paid family leave).
• Sick pay and procedure, notice periods, and details of any probationary period, including its length and conditions.
• Any training the worker must complete, and whether the employer pays for it.
• Benefits, place of work, and any terms about working abroad.

A small number of items (pensions, collective agreements, certain training information, disciplinary and grievance procedures) may follow in a supplementary statement within two months. Practical tip: a well-drafted employment contract issued before day one satisfies the requirement — the point is that the information is in the worker's hands in writing, on time.

Right-to-work checks

Before anyone starts work, you must check they have the right to work in the UK. Getting this wrong carries civil penalties that were sharply increased in 2024 — up to £45,000 per illegal worker for a first breach and £60,000 for repeats — and a correctly conducted check is your statutory excuse against them. The essentials:

• Check everyone, including British citizens — checking only people who "seem foreign" is discrimination.
• Use the correct route: manual inspection of original acceptable documents, the Home Office online share-code check for those with digital status (now the norm for most visa holders), or a certified Identity Service Provider for eligible British and Irish passport holders.
• Do the check before employment starts, in the person's presence (physically or by live video with the genuine documents in hand for manual checks).
• Keep the evidence — a clear copy plus the date of the check — for the duration of employment and two years after it ends.
• Diarise follow-up checks for anyone with time-limited permission.

Pay and statutory leave basics

The statutory floor moves every April, so build your checklist around the categories rather than memorising figures:

• National Minimum/Living Wage — the correct rate band for each worker's age, with records kept for six years. Watch the classic traps: deductions for uniforms, unpaid time opening up or closing down, and salary sacrifice taking pay below the floor.
• Holiday — 5.6 weeks' paid annual leave minimum (which may include bank holidays), pro-rated for part-timers, with special accrual rules for irregular-hours workers.
• Statutory Sick Pay — payable to eligible employees, with the eligibility rules under active reform; check current thresholds.
• Family leave and pay — maternity, paternity, adoption, shared parental, parental bereavement, and unpaid parental leave, plus day-one rights such as time off for dependants.
• Pensions auto-enrolment — assess all staff, enrol eligible jobholders, pay at least the minimum contributions, and re-enrol and re-declare every three years.

Also note the Employment Rights Act 2025 is being phased in over 2026–27, changing several of these areas (including sick pay and, in time, unfair dismissal qualifying periods) — check which provisions are in force before relying on the old rules.

Working time

• 48-hour average weekly limit, unless the worker has signed a voluntary opt-out (which they can cancel with notice).
• Rest breaks — 20 minutes when the working day exceeds six hours, 11 hours' daily rest, and 24 hours' weekly rest (or 48 hours per fortnight).
• Night workers — an average 8-hour limit in 24 and the offer of health assessments.
• Young workers have stricter limits and cannot opt out.
• Keep adequate records to show the limits are met — two years is the standard retention period for working-time records.

Discipline, grievance and the ACAS Code

Even a five-person business needs a written disciplinary and grievance procedure, and it should follow the ACAS Code of Practice: investigate first, put the allegations in writing, hold a meeting the employee can be accompanied at (by a colleague or trade-union rep), give a decision in writing, and offer an appeal to someone not previously involved. Grievances mirror the same steps. The commercial teeth: an employment tribunal can adjust compensation by up to 25% either way for an unreasonable failure to follow the Code — by the employer or the employee. Small-business realities the Code does allow for: you can scale the process to your size, but you cannot skip the basics, and dismissing on the spot without any procedure is almost never defensible.

Records: what to keep and for how long

Retention rules come from several different laws, so a single "keep everything seven years" habit both over- and under-shoots. A workable baseline:

UK GDPR cuts the other way: do not keep personal data longer than you can justify, tell staff what you keep in a privacy notice, and secure it properly. The practical failure mode in small businesses is not malice but scatter — contracts in one folder, right-to-work copies in an inbox, holiday records in a spreadsheet nobody owns. Keeping the core employee record in one structured place, whether that is a well-run filing system or a lightweight tool like HRIQ, makes both the retention rules and a tribunal disclosure exercise far less painful.

The one-page checklist

1. Written statement/contract issued on or before day one, for employees and workers.
2. Right-to-work check completed and evidenced before the start date; follow-ups diarised.
3. Pay at or above the current statutory floor; holiday, SSP and family leave handled correctly.
4. Pension auto-enrolment duties met and re-declared on cycle.
5. Working-time limits, opt-outs and rest breaks recorded.
6. Written disciplinary and grievance procedures aligned to the ACAS Code.
7. Employers' liability insurance in place and certificate displayed; H&S policy written down if you have five or more staff.
8. Retention schedule applied — and data deleted when it expires, not hoarded.

This guide is general information, not legal, tax or compliance advice. Rules change — always check the current official guidance for your situation.