The Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade has launched its consultation on targeted employment status reforms and protections for the self-employed. It follows the announcement covered in our earlier news article.
Responses close at 11:55pm on 8 January 2027. The consultation concerns employment rights in England, Wales and Scotland. It does not propose reform of the separate employment status framework for tax. The document expressly identifies its proposals as subject to consultation, rather than settled government policy.
Chapter 1: personal service and control
The Government proposes to give control greater weight when deciding whether someone is a limb (b) worker, meaning a worker who is not an employee. Under the proposed test, personal service or significant direction or control could allow the assessment to proceed to whether the individual is genuinely running a business whose customer or client is the engager.
The aim is to prevent a right of substitution from excluding worker status on its own where other features indicate a dependent working relationship. The Government is not consulting on removing all requirements for personal work: personal service would also be considered at the final stage of the proposed test. It seeks views on alternative approaches and on renaming limb (b) worker. These issues are covered in questions 1 to 13, on pages 15 to 21.
Chapter 2: presumptions and enforcement
A proposed presumption of worker status would reverse the burden of proof on status for claims involving rights available to limb (b) workers. The engager would have to establish that the claimant did not have that status. The proposal does not extend the presumption to employee status or reverse the burden of proof on whether the right itself was breached.
The consultation also considers treating repeated failures to recognise status as an aggravating factor when tribunals impose penalties, where colleagues have already succeeded on broadly similar facts. It asks how the Fair Work Agency could use its civil proceedings and legal assistance powers to resolve status questions, and whether a non-binding online assessment could help individuals and engagers understand employment status for rights. Chapter 2 covers questions 14 to 21, on pages 22 to 26.
Chapter 3: protections for the self-employed
The Government seeks views on extending particular protections to genuinely self-employed people, including by widening the meaning of worker for each specific right. This would give access to selected protections without creating a general change of status.
- Written statements: key terms of an engagement, who should qualify, when statements should be updated and whether contract duration or value should determine eligibility.
- Blacklisting: whether existing protection is sufficient and how wider protection should apply to relationships between businesses and self-employed people.
- Health and safety: protection from detriment for taking steps in serious and imminent danger, and broader eligibility for trade union health and safety representatives.
Chapter 3 covers questions 22 to 46, on pages 27 to 35. The consultation also asks how burdens on businesses could be reduced when introducing these protections.
What this means for the Forum’s work
The proposal to reverse the burden of proof is directly relevant to Rebecca Seeley Harris’s Rebuttable Presumption of Employment Status paper. Her PAYE Paid: Taxed without Rights paper examines the separate gap between tax treatment and employment rights. Because tax status reform is outside this consultation’s scope, that gap remains an issue for consideration alongside these proposals. These papers are Rebecca’s independent professional analysis.
Rebecca has written to Jonathan Reynolds and Kate Dearden to introduce the Employment Status Forum formally and offer its support in the consultation process.
How to respond and read the consultation
Businesses, trade unions, self-employed individuals and other interested parties can respond through the online survey linked from the government consultation page, by email to statusconsultation@businessandtrade.gov.uk, or by post to the Employment Status Team, Employment Rights Directorate, Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade, Old Admiralty Building, Admiralty Place, London SW1A 2DY.
The Department asks respondents to state whether they are responding individually or for an organisation, and to frame responses around the consultation questions. Further comments and evidence are also welcome.
Read the consultation and respond on GOV.UK
Download the full consultation PDF
Source: Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade, consultation published 14 October 2026. This page summarises the consultation and does not constitute a Forum consultation response.