- OVERALL ASSESSMENT
The consultation is a confirmed primary source opportunity to influence secondary legislation; none of the rights has yet taken effect. The government’s stated aim is to rebalance flexibility rather than ban zero-hours work. Workers may decline a guaranteed-hours offer and remain on their existing arrangement. This creates scope for Northstar to support the objective while arguing for proportionate implementation.
- GUARANTEED HOURS
Proposal: qualifying directly engaged workers and agency workers receive an offer reflecting hours worked during a reference period. Options include an 8–48 hour threshold, with government preference for 8–20 hours; a 12-week initial reference period; 12, 26 or 52-week subsequent periods; regularity tests; mean or median calculation; weekly or monthly allocation; adjustment margins; and limited exclusions or exceptional exemptions.
Northstar position: support the principle where contractual hours do not reflect regular work, but favour the lower, targeted end of the threshold range and safeguards against seasonal peaks being converted into unsustainable permanent obligations. A 12-week initial period is administratively simpler but may capture peak demand; 26 weeks or a seasonal adjustment may better protect operational flexibility. The preferred choice should be evidence-led rather than asserted now.
Provisional response direction: support a regularity test that requires both distribution across a meaningful number of weeks and a minimum amount of excess hours, subject to HR/Operations evidence. This provides a limited buffer for genuinely occasional additional work and is closer to Northstar’s fallback position. Support a longer subsequent period or an appropriate gap if it materially reduces repeated administration, while preserving access to a later offer. Seek a small, fixed adjustment margin linked to shift patterns, with anti-abuse controls. Seek a monthly allocation option where operationally necessary, provided total guaranteed hours remain clear.
- SEASONAL AND TEMPORARY NEED
The consultation recognises specific tasks, events and temporary need, but seeks examples outside those categories. This is a key Northstar issue. Operations should identify genuine seasonal peaks, planned outages, emergency response, project work, demand surges and other temporary operational requirements. The response should seek a clear, objective temporary-need provision and limited-term offers where a permanent guarantee would be impractical and disproportionate.
- SHIFT NOTICE
Proposal: reasonable notice is assessed case-by-case, with a presumed period of 1–4 weeks. The government central scenario assumes two weeks. Longer notice may be required for predictable work; shorter notice may be reasonable for unforeseen absence or demand disruption.
Northstar position: support advance notice as a fair standard, but seek a presumption that recognises emergency infrastructure, safety-critical work, weather, outages, unplanned absence and genuinely unforeseeable demand changes. Operations must provide current notice distributions and examples before selecting one, two, three or four weeks.
- SHORT-NOTICE PAYMENTS
Proposal: payment for employer-initiated cancellation, movement or curtailment. Short notice may be 1–7 days; a separate very-short-notice period may apply. Payment could be 10%–80% of expected earnings or the relevant minimum-wage amount. Worker-initiated changes and voluntary shift swaps are excluded. The government is considering exceptions for extreme weather and widespread power outages.
Northstar position: accept the principle of payment for employer-caused disruption, but seek a simple, proportionate regime with clear causation rules and exceptions for events outside reasonable control, safety-critical decisions, client-driven cancellations where Northstar lacks control, and worker-led changes. Finance and Operations must model exposure before a percentage is selected. The government’s central assumptions should not be treated as Northstar forecasts.
- AGENCY WORKERS AND INFORMATION
Hirers are generally responsible for guaranteed-hours offers; agencies must make short-notice payments and may recover costs from hirers. The consultation considers mandatory information-sharing by agencies.
Northstar position: support clear allocation of responsibility, standardised data fields, secure and timely information-sharing, and protection against duplicate or conflicting obligations. Legal and Procurement should review agency contracts and whether Northstar can access the information needed to determine eligibility.
- ENFORCEMENT
Guaranteed-hours and reasonable-notice rights would principally rely on Acas and tribunals. The Fair Work Agency may enforce short-notice payments, with a proposed 50% penalty, £100 minimum and £5,000 maximum per worker. This increases the importance of accurate records and clear exception notices. Legal should assess process and litigation exposure.
- EQUALITY AND WORKFORCE EFFECTS
Government analysis indicates workers in scope are more likely to be female, young, disabled and from some ethnic minority groups. Northstar should not make unsupported claims, but should test whether changes to allocation of additional hours could affect protected groups, caring arrangements or access to flexible work.
- MATERIAL EVIDENCE GAPS
Northstar currently lacks supplied evidence on the 400 affected roles’ distribution, hours patterns, shift notice and cancellation rates, seasonal peaks, agency-worker arrangements, cost exposure, system readiness, equality impacts and preferred technical parameters. These gaps prevent a final question-by-question response and approval paper.