What UK Employers Must Do About Menopause by 2027
The Employment Rights Act 2025 turns menopause support from a nice-to-have into a published legal obligation. Here is the timeline, who it catches, what your plan must contain and what happens if you ignore it.
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Bolton, Manchester, North WestBy 2027, UK employers with 250 or more employees must publish a Menopause Action Plan: at least one concrete action supporting employees through menopause, published on the government’s gender pay gap service. Publication is voluntary from April 2026 and becomes mandatory from spring 2027 under the Employment Rights Act 2025, subject to secondary legislation.
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The Timeline: Voluntary in 2026, Mandatory From 2027
The menopause employer obligations arrive in stages, and the stages matter — because the voluntary year is the one that determines how painful the mandatory year is.
The Employment Rights Act 2025 becomes law. Among its reforms: equality action plans for large employers, covering the gender pay gap and menopause support.
The Office for Equality and Opportunity publishes employer guidance and the list of six recommended menopause actions.
Voluntary publication opens. Employers with 250 or more employees can create, submit and publish a Menopause Action Plan on the gender pay gap service, alongside their pay gap data.
Deadlines to publish a voluntary plan for the 2026–27 reporting year (public sector / private and voluntary sector respectively).
Publication becomes mandatory, subject to secondary legislation. On the standard reporting cycle, the first enforced publication deadline is expected to fall by April 2028, for the 2027–28 reporting year. The government has not yet fixed that date in regulations — but nobody sensible is planning around the possibility that it slips.
Be precise about what “2027” means here, because half the commentary is not. The duty switches on in spring 2027. The first mandatory plan is then expected to be due by April 2028. If you are treating April 2028 as your start date, you have misread how this works: the plan describes actions you are already taking. Actions take a year to be real. Which lands you back at now.
Who Do the 2027 Menopause Obligations Apply To?
250+ Employees: Publication Duty
The publication duty: employers with 250 or more employees, counted per legal entity. Same population as gender pay gap reporting. A group with three qualifying companies files three plans. Private and voluntary sector employers must also name a responsible person — a director, partner or senior officer — who confirms the plan is accurate.
Under 250: Same Legal Exposure
Everyone else: no publication duty, same legal exposure. Most North West employers we work with sit well under 250 staff, and none of them are exempt from the part that actually costs money. Menopause symptoms can amount to a disability under the Equality Act 2010, which applies from your first employee.
Tribunal cases referencing menopause more than tripled in two years — 204 in 2024, up from 64 in 2022 — and disability discrimination compensation is uncapped. In Lynskey v Direct Line, the bill for performance-managing symptoms instead of adjusting for them was £64,645.
There is also a second-hand effect already reaching smaller firms: large customers are starting to ask about menopause support in supplier questionnaires, the same way they ask about modern slavery and carbon. If you sell into organisations with 250+ staff, their published plan becomes your due diligence question.
What Must a Menopause Action Plan Include?
The statutory minimum is short. Your plan must contain at least two actions: a minimum of one addressing your gender pay gap, and a minimum of one supporting employees experiencing menopause — explicitly including perimenopause and postmenopause, accessible to employees of any age. It is created, submitted and published on the gender pay gap service, publicly, next to your pay gap numbers.
The practical minimum is higher. The government encourages employers to go beyond one action per area, and a single-action plan sitting in public next to your competitors’ fuller ones is not the look your recruitment team wants. A credible plan names specific actions, a named owner, a deadline and a metric for each. Our free menopause action plan template has all of that pre-built, with the six government actions loaded and ready to edit.
One warning from casework: the plan is a public promise, and public promises get held against you. Publish “we train all our managers” while your training records show nothing, and you have manufactured evidence for the other side’s barrister. Never publish an action your paperwork cannot support — start the paperwork first. A menopause policy is where that paperwork begins.
Never publish an action your paperwork cannot support. A public promise your training records contradict is manufactured evidence for the other side.
The 6 Government-Recommended Menopause Actions
The guidance lists six evidence-informed actions. You must commit to at least one. We recommend three in year one — chosen for your workforce, not alphabetically.
Train managers to support employees experiencing menopause. The highest-value action on the list. Most menopause tribunal claims trace back to one badly handled conversation, and Lynskey turned on managers who performance-managed instead of adjusting. See menopause training for managers.
Offer occupational health advice for employees experiencing menopause. A named, working referral route. If your managers cannot say who to call, you do not have this action — you have a sentence.
Set up menopause support groups and networks. Low cost, visible commitment. Works best with a named coordinator rather than a launch email that dies in a month.
Offer workplace adjustments for employees experiencing menopause. Temperature, uniform, breaks, workload, hours. Where symptoms meet the disability threshold this overlaps with your existing duty to make reasonable adjustments — meaning parts of “the 2027 obligations” already apply to you today.
Conduct a menopause risk assessment for your workplace. Identify, record, act, review. Heat, uniforms, shift patterns and customer-facing pressure all move the risk.
Review policies and procedures to meet the needs of employees experiencing menopause. Absence triggers, performance management, flexible working, leave. If your policies predate 2023, they predate every word of this legislation.
What Happens If You Don’t Comply?
Here is the honest answer, not the scary one.
Formal penalties: modest, so far. Enforcement is expected to mirror gender pay gap reporting, where the Equality and Human Rights Commission is the enforcer. Across the 2023–2025 gender pay gap cycles the EHRC issued nearly 1,900 warning notices — and no fines. Expect the same machinery here: warning notices, compliance correspondence and a public register of who has and has not filed.
Public visibility: modest, so far. The service shows the plans. A missing or hollow entry is visible to every candidate you interview, every journalist with a slow news day, and every competitor’s recruiter armed with a screenshot. Employers who spent 2018 explaining their gender pay gap to the local press already know how this plays out. In a North West labour market where employers already fight for experienced staff — and women over 50 are one of the fastest-growing parts of the workforce — a public shrug on menopause is a self-inflicted hiring problem.
The tribunal: modest, so far. The claims risk exists with or without the publication duty: 204 menopause cases in 2024, uncapped disability discrimination awards, £64,645 in Lynskey. A genuine action plan reduces that exposure directly, because trained managers and recorded adjustments are precisely what stops claims arising and defends the ones that do. Compliance and risk reduction are, for once, the same piece of work.
Your 4-Step Act-Now Checklist
Audit what you have (this month).
Policies, absence data, adjustment records, training logs. Count how many of the six actions you could evidence today. Most employers score one or zero. Now you know your gap.
Fix the paperwork (within 3 months).
A menopause policy reconciled against your absence triggers, plus adjustment records that would survive a tribunal’s reading. The policy is the foundation the published plan stands on.
Train your managers (within 6 months).
The single action with the biggest legal and practical return. One half-day, all people managers, attendance recorded — because a training register is evidence and an intranet page is not.
Draft, sign and diarise the plan (within 9 months).
Use the action plan template: actions, owners, deadlines, metrics, responsible person sign-off. If you are 250+, publish in the voluntary window and treat 2026–27 as your rehearsal. If you are smaller, hold the document internally — it is your tribunal defence file either way.
Want this as one page on the wall?
Download the 2027 Menopause Compliance Checklist — the four steps, the six actions and the confirmed dates on a single PDF.
How DaisyHR Gets You Compliant Before the Deadline
We run the four steps for you. A CIPD-qualified consultant audits your current position, writes the policy and plan, trains your managers in a half-day session, and sets the annual review so the plan stays true after publication. Fixed scope, fixed price, no long tie-ins — you stay because it works.
And if the audit shows you are closer than you feared, we will say exactly that. Some employers need two documents and a training day, not a retainer. We will tell you honestly if you do not need us.
Menopause Obligations: Confirmed Dates vs Expected Dates
Employment Rights Act 2025 becomes law.
Government guidance and the six recommended menopause actions published.
Voluntary Menopause Action Plan publication opens for 250+ employers; voluntary deadlines 30 March / 4 April 2027.
Publication becomes mandatory for 250+ employers, subject to secondary legislation.
First enforced publication deadline (2027–28 reporting year), on the standard reporting cycle. Not yet fixed in regulations; we will update this page when the statutory instrument lands.
Frequently Asked Questions
From spring 2027, employers with 250 or more employees must publish a Menopause Action Plan — at least one concrete action supporting employees through menopause — on the government’s gender pay gap service, under the Employment Rights Act 2025, subject to secondary legislation. The first enforced deadline is expected by April 2028 for the 2027–28 reporting year.
No. From April 2026 publication is voluntary, with deadlines of 30 March 2027 (most public authorities) and 4 April 2027 (private and voluntary sector) for the 2026–27 reporting year. The government has framed the voluntary year as a practice run.
The publication duty does not. The Equality Act 2010 does — from your first employee. Menopause tribunal cases tripled between 2022 and 2024, awards are uncapped, and larger customers are beginning to ask suppliers about menopause provision. The work is worth doing at any headcount; only the publishing is size-gated.
The government lists six evidence-informed actions: manager training, occupational health advice, support groups and networks, workplace adjustments, a menopause risk assessment, and reviewing policies and procedures. You must commit to at least one. An action needs an owner, a deadline and a metric — a sentiment does not qualify.
Enforcement is expected to follow the gender pay gap model: the EHRC issued nearly 1,900 warning notices across 2023–2025 and no fines. The sharper penalties are being publicly visible as a non-complier, and the unchanged tribunal exposure — which is uncapped and which a real plan directly reduces.
Not by name. Claims run through disability, sex and age under the Equality Act 2010 — and increasingly succeed. Lynskey v Direct Line (£64,645) treated serious menopause symptoms as a disability, triggering the reasonable adjustments duty.
Yes. The plan is the public promise; the policy is the internal machinery that makes the promise true. Publishing a plan your policies cannot evidence is worse than publishing nothing. Start with the free menopause policy template, then the action plan template.
Now, regardless of size. A credible plan describes actions already running — training delivered, adjustments recorded, policy reviewed. That takes most employers six to nine months. Counting back from spring 2027 leaves less runway than the deadline suggests.
Get Menopause Compliance Advice From a North West HR Consultant
Book a free 30-minute consultation. We will assess where you stand against the 2027 obligations, tell you which of the six actions you can already evidence and exactly what closing the gap involves. No charge. No obligation.
Serving employers across Bolton, Manchester, Salford, Stockport, Wigan, Warrington, Bury, Rochdale, Preston, Lancaster and Chester.
Written by Samantha Boyle MCIPD, Fractional HR Director, Bolton & North West. · Last reviewed: July 2026