The right to disconnect in the United Kingdom
Reviewed by Mellow Editorial Team, HR & payroll content team
The UK has no statutory right to disconnect — no law currently obliges employers to let workers ignore out-of-hours contact. But that does not mean employers are free to contact staff around the clock without consequence. Existing obligations around working time, health and safety, and rest periods already create real duties, and the Employment Rights Act 2025 signals that worker protections are continuing to expand.
What the law does and does not say
There is no dedicated right-to-disconnect legislation in the UK, unlike Ireland (which introduced a statutory Code of Practice in 2021) or France (which has had a legal framework since 2017).
What the UK does have:
- Working Time Regulations 1998 set limits on average weekly working hours (the 48-hour limit, unless the worker opts out), daily and weekly rest periods, and annual leave. Workers are entitled to 5.6 weeks of statutory leave each year.
- Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 places a general duty on employers to protect employee wellbeing — including mental health. Chronic overwork and always-on expectations can create foreseeable stress-related harm, which employers have a duty to manage.
- The implied duty of trust and confidence within employment contracts means persistently contacting employees outside working hours in an unreasonable way could, in extreme cases, support a constructive dismissal claim.
So while there is no switch to flip, the legal scaffolding around working time and wellbeing already limits what employers can reasonably demand.
The Employment Rights Act 2025 and what comes next
The Employment Rights Act 2025 strengthens a range of day-one employment rights and signals a government appetite for expanding worker protections. While the Act does not introduce an explicit right to disconnect, the government has indicated it is watching closely how similar frameworks operate in other jurisdictions.
Employers who assume the current gap in legislation is permanent are taking a risk. Building sensible out-of-hours policies now is cheaper and less disruptive than retrofitting them under future legal pressure.
The business case for a disconnect policy
Beyond legal exposure, constant availability expectations damage retention and performance. Staff who cannot switch off accumulate fatigue, which erodes productivity and increases absence. A clear policy:
- Sets consistent expectations across teams, reducing the informal pressure individuals feel to reply at midnight because a manager did
- Helps managers lead by example rather than inadvertently modelling always-on behaviour
- Supports compliance with rest-period requirements under the Working Time Regulations
- Strengthens your position if a worker raises a stress-related grievance — demonstrating that the business took reasonable steps matters
It is also increasingly relevant to recruitment. Candidates, particularly those with caring responsibilities or those returning from periods of leave, actively look for employers with credible boundaries around working hours.
What a practical policy should cover
A right-to-disconnect policy does not need to be long. The key elements are:
Scope. Define which workers it applies to — employees, workers, those on zero-hours contracts. If you use contractors or engage people through an employer of record arrangement, clarify expectations separately.
Core and non-core hours. Specify when workers are expected to be contactable and when they are not. Be specific rather than vague ("outside core hours of 9am–6pm" is more useful than "outside normal hours").
Communication channels. Address email, messaging apps (Teams, Slack, WhatsApp) and phone separately. Many workplace stress issues stem from informal channels that blur the boundary between work and personal time.
Exceptions. Identify genuinely urgent situations and who decides whether something qualifies. Without this, every message gets framed as urgent.
Manager responsibilities. State clearly that managers should not send messages expecting out-of-hours responses, and should use scheduling tools (delayed send on email, for example) where they choose to work outside core hours themselves.
Opt-outs and on-call arrangements. Where roles require genuine availability beyond core hours, document this in contracts and ensure workers are fairly compensated. Conflating an on-call arrangement with a general expectation that everyone is reachable at all times is a common mistake.
How to implement it without creating friction
Roll out through line managers first so they understand the intent before it reaches their teams. A policy that managers privately dismiss will not change behaviour.
Review your communication tools. If your project management platform sends notifications at all hours by default, change the defaults. Technology shapes behaviour more reliably than a document on an intranet.
Check existing contracts and job descriptions. If working hours are specified, out-of-hours contact expectations should be consistent with those terms. Where roles have evolved so that expectations no longer match the contract, update the documentation.
Finally, make it part of your regular people management conversations — appraisals, return-to-work meetings, onboarding. A policy that only appears when something goes wrong has limited value.
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