What are your rights as an NHS bank worker? 

Why are the new provisions in the Employment Act 2025 so consequential?

The Act introduces three significant changes for zero-hours workers, which also apply to NHS bank staff. 

These are the right to guaranteed hours, the right to reasonable notice and the right to compensation. Let’s see them in detail.

Right to guaranteed hours. If you work a consistent pattern over a set reference period of time,this means that your Trust might be required to offer you a contract reflecting those average hours.

Right to reasonable notice. The act says your employer must give you a specified notice period before a shift starts and before cancelling or changing one you’ve already accepted.

Right to compensation. If your employer cancels, moves or cuts short a shift you already accepted at short notice, you could be entitled to a payment reflecting what you would have earned if the shift had taken place as intended.

The consequences for staff and employers

If you are a genuinely casual bank worker who picks and chooses shifts, then your experience will probably not change much.

However, for bank workers that have settled into regular, predictable patterns of work, this change in the law could mean that you are entitled to a guaranteed-hours contract. Even if this is not the case, you should experience less uncertainty in your working patterns.

For employing Trusts, an informal approach to communicating shifts availability at short notice, and likewise to cancellations and changes, won’t be an acceptable policy anymore. Adequate notice is now a legal requirement, not a courtesy. 

For staff, it means a stronger, more enforceable right to be paid for cancelled or hastily rearranged shifts.