Having been on the horizon since September 2023, when Labour announced their plan to reduce the cost of buying school uniforms, the new rules on limiting the number of compulsory items of branded school uniform come into force on 1 September 2026.

The Department for Education (DfE) has published new guidance in relation to allergy safety in schools.

The EAT ruled that reassigning an employee while investigating a complaint against him was not victimisation, as the move stemmed from the complaint itself, not any protected act.

The government has launched a consultation on how the Fair Work Agency (FWA) will enforce statutory holiday pay from 2027. The proposals signal a significant shift away from relying solely on individual tribunal claims and towards a more proactive enforcement regime.

In a fact-specific decision, the EAT has confirmed that a dismissal for threatening and intimidating messages posted in a union WhatsApp group during industrial action was not automatically unfair. 

The Court of Appeal has confirmed that businesses will not usually be vicariously liable for the wrongful acts of workers employed by a genuine independent contractor. Liability is more likely to arise only where the business has assumed day-to-day control over the contractor's staff.

The Crime and Policing Act 2026 removes the supervision exemption from regulated activity. This change, which primarily affects volunteer arrangements, comes into force on 1 September 2026.

On 19 June 2026, Section 164A of the Data Protection Act 2018 introduced a formalised framework for how organisations, including schools, must handle data protection complaints. While the statutory requirements themselves are relatively procedural in nature, their interaction with existing school complaints frameworks, particularly the ISSR Part 7 parental complaints procedure, raises important practical questions.

In this article, we set out our view on how academies can most effectively manage these overlapping regimes, ensuring compliance while preserving fairness and operational efficiency.

The Department for Education (DfE) has published a revised version of its statutory guidance Suspension and Permanent Exclusion from maintained schools, academies and pupil referral units in England, including pupil movement, which comes into force on 26 July 2026.