Research and analysis

RPC opinion: time off for public duties consultation options

Published 20 August 2026

Lead department: Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade, formerly Department for Business and Trade

Summary of proposal: Consult on amendments to the list of public duties under section 50 of the Employment Rights Act 1996, adding special constables and selected local representation and community governance roles, removing national public service governance duties, and not adding some frontline public service delivery roles.

Submission type: options assessment – 2 June 2026

Legislation type: secondary

RPC reference: RPC-DBT-26172-OA(1)

Date of issue: 26 June 2026

RPC opinion rating

Fit for purpose:

• the options assessment (OA) provides a clear rationale for reviewing the statutory list of public duties, identifying gaps and inconsistencies in coverage, roles that no longer align with the original local civic purpose, and barriers to participation for individuals in employment
• it presents a targeted preferred option that adds roles such as academy trust governors, removes national public service governance duties, and rejects expansion where roles do not meet legal or policy tests
• the OA includes an assessment of familiarisation and reorganisation costs
• the final impact assessment (IA) should provide a role-level inclusion and exclusion table showing how each duty has been tested against the legal and policy criteria and strengthen the evidence for the main take-up and time-commitment assumptions
• the final IA should test how small businesses need clear guidance on what constitutes reasonable refusal

RPC opinion summary

Rationale: Green

The OA clearly explains why the current statutory list is no longer coherent. It identifies gaps in treatment of equivalent roles, the inclusion of some national public body roles without a clear ongoing rationale, and barriers to participation for employed individuals. The objectives should be improved to become SMART in the final IA, by including measurable and time-specific elements.

Identification of options: Green

The OA identifies a reasonable range of regulatory and non-regulatory options, including guidance, broad expansion, additions without removals and targeted amendment. The final IA should show role by role how the inclusion and exclusion tests have been applied, particularly for boundary cases such as on-call firefighters, police volunteers and national public body roles. The final IA should test how small businesses need clear guidance on what constitutes reasonable refusal, given they lack HR support.

Justification for preferred way forward: Green

The OA justifies the preferred package by comparing it with broader expansion and showing lower business costs. The final IA should strengthen the evidence behind take-up and time commitment assumptions, especially for academy trust governance roles and special constables, and explain how consultation evidence has tested the boundary of the package.

Regulatory scorecard: Satisfactory

The scorecard estimates a Net Present Social Value of -£196 million and Equivalent Annual Net Direct Cost to Business of £22.8 million for the preferred option. Benefits to employees, employers and public bodies are discussed but unquantified. The final IA should strengthen the assessment of the scale of benefits.

Monitoring and evaluation: Satisfactory

The OA provides a proportionate monitoring framework with objectives, indicators, indicative data sources, collection approaches and evaluation questions. It should be developed before final IA stage by identifying baselines, review timing, data owners, reporting cadence and how findings would inform future changes to the statutory list.

Summary of proposal

The department is consulting on amendments to section 50 of the Employment Rights Act 1996, which gives employees a statutory right to reasonable time off work to undertake specified public duties. The proposal follows a review of the statutory list of eligible public duties. The review identified gaps and inconsistencies in the current list, including where equivalent academy trust governance roles are not covered, while some national public service governance roles remain in scope without a clear link to the original local civic purpose of the entitlement.

The preferred option is a targeted amendment of the statutory list. It would add special constables and selected local representation and community governance roles, remove national public service governance duties, and not add some frontline public service delivery duties or further national governance roles.

The entitlement would remain limited to reasonable time off and would not require employers to pay employees for the time taken. The OA estimates an NPSV of -£196 million and an EANDCB of £22.8 million for the preferred option, with costs driven mainly by familiarisation, reorganisation and administration costs to business. The consultation seeks views on the proposed changes and their practical implications for employers, employees and public bodies.

Rationale

Problem under consideration

The OA explains that section 50 of the Employment Rights Act 1996 gives employees a statutory right to reasonable time off work for specified public duties, but that the list has not been comprehensively reviewed since the original 1975 legislation.

It identifies 3 problems: gaps and inconsistencies in treatment of equivalent roles across Great Britain; retention of some national public body roles that no longer align with the original local civic purpose; and exclusion of roles that support the running and governance of public services.

The academy trust example is a strong illustration, with around 99,000 governance volunteers falling outside scope despite performing comparable functions to maintained school governors. The problem is therefore specific, evidence-linked and directly relevant to the proposed legislative update.

Argument for intervention

The OA explains that the entitlement supports civic participation where employers may not account for the wider public value generated by employees undertaking public duties. It explains that inconsistencies can create uncertainty for employers and employees and may deter participation in roles that deliver public value. This is a reasonable rationale, and the measure updates an existing statutory entitlement rather than creating a new right.

Objectives and theory of change

The objectives are framed around consistency of the statutory framework, reduced barriers to participation for employed individuals, and support for participation in key public service and local governance roles. They should be improved in the final IA to include measurable and time-specific elements.

The theory of change links secondary legislation to updated eligibility, employer process changes, improved participation and wider public service benefits. The final IA could make the causal assumptions more explicit. It could distinguish between roles where statutory time off is likely to affect participation materially and roles where other factors, such as recruitment processes, remuneration, professional background or existing employer practice, are more likely to determine take-up.

Identification of options

Identification of longlist

The OA identifies a reasonable longlist: business as usual, guidance and voluntary employer practice, broad expansion with retention of all existing duties, adding eligible duties without removals, and targeted amendment of the statutory list. The longlist is stronger than a narrow add/remove list because it considers the regulatory and non-regulatory alternatives.

Consideration of alternatives to regulation

The OA recognises that revised guidance and voluntary employer practice could improve awareness and encourage support for civic participation, but explains this would not restore statutory entitlement for academy trust governance roles, bring special constables clearly within scope, or remove roles that no longer align with the policy purpose.

Justification for shortlisted options

The preferred option is a targeted amendment of the statutory list. It would add special constables and selected local representation and community governance roles, remove national public service governance duties, and not add frontline public service delivery duties or further national public service governance duties.

The OA explains that this targeted package is preferred because it addresses statutory gaps and inconsistencies while keeping impacts on employers proportionate. It explains why a broad expansion would impose unnecessary burdens where roles do not meet the legal or policy tests.

The OA does not use critical success factors. The final IA should present the tests used to move from the longlist to the shortlist in a more transparent tabular form, including the critical success factors used, so each role’s inclusion or exclusion is clearly traceable.

Small and micro business assessment

The small and micro business assessment notes that the measure applies to employers of all sizes, consistent with the existing statutory entitlement, and estimates about 80% of businesses are micro businesses, though these account for 13% of employees. It recognises that smaller employers may face higher relative burdens from absences, while explaining that the entitlement is to reasonable time off only, that employers may refuse unreasonable requests, and time off need not be paid.

The final IA should provide more evidence on which business types are most likely to employ individuals undertaking the added public duties, and whether role-specific burdens are concentrated in particular sectors. The final IA should use consultation evidence to test how small and micro businesses require clear guidance and practical examples on the application of the “reasonable time off” test. This should include how employers without dedicated HR or legal support, can assess requests, refuse unreasonable requests lawfully, and manage operational impacts without facing disproportionate compliance uncertainty or dispute risk.

Justification for preferred way forward

Identifying impacts and scale

The OA provides a transparent cost appraisal. For the preferred option it estimates a Net Present Social Value of -£196 million and an equivalent annual net direct cost to business of £22.8 million. Key quantified impacts are one-off familiarisation costs of £28 million, annual reorganisation costs of £18 million and annual administrative costs of £2 million.

The broad-expansion illustrative option has a higher estimated NPSV cost of -£263 million and EANDCB of £30.6 million, which supports the proportionality of the targeted approach. The final IA should improve the evidence base for take-up assumptions, particularly where assumptions are based on general employment rates, or stakeholder engagement, rather than duty-specific evidence.

Counterfactual and baseline

The baseline is business as usual, under which the current statutory list remains unchanged and existing informal or voluntary arrangements continue. The department’s treatment of existing time off arrangements is particularly important for academy trust governance roles, where the OA adjusts for those already receiving time off or not requiring it. The final IA should test whether similar adjustments are needed across other duties.

Evidence and data

The OA uses a pragmatic evidence base, drawing on departmental and stakeholder data, business population estimates, ASHE wage data, CBI absence-cost evidence, governance surveys and role-specific information. It is open about limitations, including limited duty-specific data on take-up, employment patterns and regional or sectoral concentration. The final IA should include an assumptions log setting out the source, robustness, sensitivity and direction of bias for each major assumption.

Uncertainty and risk

The OA includes sensitivity analysis for administrative costs. For the preferred option, lower and upper administrative-cost assumptions produce NPSV estimates of -£187 million to -£232 million and EANDCB estimates of £22 million to £27 million. But the main uncertainty likely sits in the take-up and time-commitment assumptions rather than only processing time.

The final IA should therefore provide sensitivity testing to cover uptake for the largest cost-driving roles, particularly academy or academy trust governors and special constables. It should make clearer how the consultation will be used to test assumptions on employer refusal, unpaid time off, and whether duties are performed during working hours.

Selection of the preferred option

The OA selects a preferred option, rather than consulting on an open range. The preferred option is justified as more coherent than business as usual, more effective than guidance, less burdensome than broad expansion, and more consistent than additions without removals. The final IA should set out whether consultation responses have changed the boundary of the package, and if not, why the original legal and policy tests remain sufficient.

Regulatory scorecard

Part A

The scorecard states that total welfare is uncertain because many benefits are not quantified, while business impacts are negative and household impacts are positive. The scorecard would be stronger if it separated the effects of adding roles from the effects of removing roles, even where removals are expected to have negligible savings. It should make the largest cost drivers more prominent: academy or academy trust governors account for around £13 million of the £18 million annual reorganisation cost, while special constables account for around £4 million. The final IA should strengthen the assessment of the scale of benefits, using quantification where proportionate.

Part B

The OA treats business environment effects as neutral on the basis that this is a targeted update to an existing entitlement, and assesses international, natural capital and decarbonisation impacts as neutral. The distributional discussion is more substantive, recognising potential impacts by business size, low income, region and age, while explaining that the reasonableness test limits the risk of undue business burden. The final IA should improve the evidence on whether particular sectors are more likely to employ affected role-holders, because this is relevant to both proportionality and the credibility of the small and micro business assessment.

Monitoring and evaluation

The monitoring and evaluation section identifies Department for Business and Trade as the lead, links the review to the theory of change, and provides indicators, data sources and collection approaches for each objective. It also includes reasonable review questions covering consistency of the statutory list, participation among individuals in employment, recruitment and retention in key roles, costs to employers and unintended consequences.

The final IA could convert this into a more operational plan, with named owners, review timing, baselines, minimum evidence requirements and a reporting cadence. It should identify what evidence would trigger further amendment to the statutory list or updated guidance.