Last reviewed: October 2026 · Written by: Alex Craven · 01792 732702
From 30 October, a Customer Harassing Your Staff Is Legally Your Problem
From 30 October 2026, the Employment Rights Act 2025 makes a UK employer liable when a customer or any other third party harasses a member of staff — unless the business took all reasonable steps to prevent it. It covers every Equality Act harassment type, and a single incident can be enough. The fix is not a bouncer on the door: it is what good operators already do — behaviour standard, incident log, de-escalation, banning procedure — written down this time.
- What changes: section 21 of the Employment Rights Act 2025 adds a new Equality Act duty — an employer “must not permit a third party to harass” an employee.
- Third party means: customers, clients, suppliers, contractors, delivery drivers, members of the public — in person or online.
- All harassment types: conduct related to any of the seven protected characteristics, plus sexual harassment.
- One incident can be enough: the old pre-2013 rule needed two previous occasions; the new duty has no threshold.
- The defence: liability only bites if you failed to take all reasonable steps — proportionate to your size and resources.
Every operator has a version of the story. The regular who makes the same comment to the Saturday girl every week. The table of twelve that turns on one member of staff. The takeaway counter at 11.40pm. Until now, how you handled that was a management and decency question. From 30 October 2026 it is also a legal one, and it lands on the business, not the customer.
The reassurance up front: if you run a decent room, you are probably already doing most of what the law expects. The gap for most small hospitality businesses is not behaviour — it is being able to show what you do. What follows is the calm version for a café, pub or fish bar. It is operator guidance, not legal advice; for a specific situation, talk to your HR adviser or Acas.
Table of Contents
What actually changes on 30 October
The mechanics are short. Section 21 of the Employment Rights Act 2025 inserts a new subsection into section 40 of the Equality Act 2010: an employer “must not permit a third party to harass” one of its employees. A third party is anyone who is not you or your staff — a customer, a supplier’s driver, a stranger who wanders in. You have “permitted” harassment only if it happened in the course of the employee’s work and you failed to take all reasonable steps to prevent it.
Two details matter most. First, this covers every type of Equality Act harassment — not just the sexual-harassment duty carried since October 2024, which is itself strengthened the same day to “all reasonable steps”. Second, a single incident can be enough. The old third-party rule, abolished in 2013, only bit after a customer had done it twice before. The new one has no such count.
One honesty note on the date: 30 October 2026 is set in the Government’s implementation roadmap and stated plainly in Acas’s guidance. The formal commencement regulations appointing the day had not been laid at the time of writing — the Act is being switched on in waves — but nothing has moved, and nobody serious is planning around a slip.
Who is exposed — and why the timing stings
Any business whose staff face the public — in hospitality, nearly all of them. The scenarios are not exotic: a bar team dealing with a stag party; a waitress taking the brunt of a table’s running “joke” about her accent; a driver abusing the counter because the app said eight minutes. If your people serve strangers, you own the environment those strangers create.
And the date is not neutral. It lands just before the festive season — rooms fullest, drink flowing, and casual staff newly in post with forty minutes of training. If you are hiring Christmas casuals this autumn, the harassment briefing belongs in the same induction huddle as the till and the fire exits. The Christmas trading countdown is usually about kit and stock; this year it has a staffing line too.
Worth saying clearly: this is not a law designed to catch small operators out. It makes every employer do what the good pubs and cafés that back their staff already do.
The defence: what “all reasonable steps” looks like at your scale
“All reasonable steps” is deliberately proportionate. Acas is explicit that it means doing what is possible with the resources you have — a four-table café is not expected to run a corporate compliance programme. Until any detailed regulations arrive, the sensible reading for a small operator:
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A visible behaviour standard. One firm, polite sign on the door or at the till: “Our team will always treat you with respect. We ask the same in return — abuse or harassment of staff means you’ll be asked to leave.”
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A written line in your policy. Half a page: what harassment is, that it includes customers, how to report it, that the business will act. No handbook? A dated one-pager beats nothing in writing.
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A de-escalation expectation. Staff know they can step away, swap sections and fetch the manager — nobody “takes it” for the sake of a sale. The duty manager handles the difficult customer, not the seventeen-year-old.
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A refusal and banning procedure. Who decides, what is said, how a ban is recorded so the Saturday team knows. You already refuse service to drunks; same muscle, wider trigger.
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An incident log. Covered below — it turns everything above from “we would say that, wouldn’t we” into evidence.
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A briefing, repeated. Five minutes in the huddle, again when casuals start, again before Christmas. Note the date.
The incident log: the cheapest insurance you will write this year
If a claim ever comes, the question will not be whether you are nice people. It will be: what steps did you take, and can you show them? Hospitality already runs on this habit — it is the fridge-temperature diary that carries you through an EHO visit. Operators who keep an evidence pack for their hygiene rating will recognise the move: the work only counts if it is written down. A bound notebook behind the bar or a shared form, one line per incident:
| Record | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Date, time, where in the premises | Anchors the account while memories are fresh. |
| Who was involved — staff member, customer description, witnesses | Supports the staff member’s version if disputed. |
| What was said or done, in plain words | Vague entries (“customer was rude”) prove nothing. |
| What you did — warned, refused service, banned, reported to police | This line is the defence in action. |
| Follow-up — check-in with staff, briefing updated | Shows a system, not a one-off reaction. |
Review the log monthly. If the same regular appears twice, the system is telling you something a tribunal would also notice — acting on the pattern is exactly the monitoring Acas lists among reasonable precautions.
What this law is not
Keeping this honest matters, because the scare version sells training courses. The new duty does not require door staff at a sandwich shop, and it does not bite every time a customer is short-tempered or complains loudly about the wait — harassment in law is unwanted conduct related to a protected characteristic, or of a sexual nature, that violates someone’s dignity or creates a degrading or hostile environment. Nor are you the guarantor of every incident: the duty is all reasonable steps, not a world where nothing bad ever happens. A business that briefed its team, displayed its standard, logged the incident and banned the offender has a defence; the law is aimed at the employer who shrugged and told the kid on the counter it is part of the job.
Separate premises duties are arriving on their own timetables — Martyn’s Law brings protect duties for venues from 2027 — and it is easy to lump them into one blur of “more rules”. Resist that. This one costs almost nothing to meet and overlaps almost entirely with being the kind of place good staff want to work.
Craven Cooling’s lane is the kit, not the case law — but we spend our days in the same rooms your staff work in, from the takeaway counter to the back bar. If the winter plan includes equipment too: 01792 732702 or [email protected], Swansea showroom, 2-year parts warranty on what we supply.
From 30 October 2026, section 21 of the Employment Rights Act 2025 makes UK employers liable when customers or other third parties harass their staff, unless the business took all reasonable steps to prevent it. It covers all Equality Act harassment types and a single incident can be enough. The proportionate response for a pub, café or takeaway: behaviour-standard signage, a half-page policy, a de-escalation expectation, a refusal-and-ban procedure, a reviewed incident log, and a briefing repeated for seasonal staff — written down and dated, because the defence is only as good as the evidence.
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