{"id":6955,"date":"2026-04-23T14:46:50","date_gmt":"2026-04-23T13:46:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/?p=6955"},"modified":"2026-04-23T13:46:53","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T13:46:53","slug":"new-payroll-obligations-annual-leave-and-pay-record-keeping-from-6-april-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/new-payroll-obligations-annual-leave-and-pay-record-keeping-from-6-april-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"New payroll obligations: Annual leave and pay record-keeping from 6 April 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A significant but widely overlooked change took effect on 6 April 2026, placing new legal duties on all employers regarding how they record annual leave and pay.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Many employers will have missed this update, which forms part of the Employment Rights Act (ERA) 2025, so it is important that you act now.<\/p>\n<h3><strong>What has changed?<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>Section 35 of the Act is now in force, creating a new statutory duty for all employers to maintain accurate and complete records of employees&#8217; annual leave entitlement and pay, which must be retained for a minimum of six years.<\/p>\n<p>Despite its significance, this requirement has attracted very little media attention and does not appear in the Government&#8217;s own published implementation timeline for the Plan to Make Work Pay.<\/p>\n<h3><strong>What does this mean for your business?<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>Many businesses will already hold some annual leave and pay data, but the question is whether your existing records are detailed enough to satisfy the new legal standard.<\/p>\n<p>For each employee, you will need to be able to demonstrate their:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Annual leave entitlement, including statutory and any contractual enhancement<\/li>\n<li>Leave taken, including dates and duration<\/li>\n<li>Pay received for that leave<\/li>\n<li>Any carry-over or adjustments made during the leave year<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Failure to comply will lead to action from the new Fair Work Agency (FWA), which was established on 7 April 2026.<\/p>\n<p>This new agency is expected to oversee compliance with annual leave and is likely to take action in future if organisations aren\u2019t compliant.<\/p>\n<p>The full enforcement timeline is due to be outlined soon, but that does not mean that employers should wait to update and maintain their payroll processes.<\/p>\n<h3><strong>Getting your payroll records in order<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>We strongly encourage all employers to review their current payroll and HR systems as a priority, given this change under the Act.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A significant but widely overlooked change took effect on 6 April 2026, placing new legal duties on all employers regarding how they record annual leave and pay.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6958,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,49],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6955"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6955"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6955\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6956,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6955\/revisions\/6956"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}