Employment related securities bulletin 67 (July 2026)
Read important information about accessibility improvements to the employment related securities (ERS) end of year templates, guidance and technical notes from 6 April 2027.
End of year template accessibility improvements from 6 April 2027
To make sure that HMRC documents are compliant with accessibility regulations, we’re reviewing the employment related securities (ERS) end of year return templates, guidance and technical notes.
We first highlighted this change in employment related securities bulletin 64.
We are not changing the actual reporting requirements for the end of year templates.
Until 5 April 2027 you can continue to use the current versions of the ERS end of year return templates to report ERS activity for any tax year.
From 6 April 2027, employers reporting ERS for any tax year will need to use the updated end of year return templates, technical notes and guidance pages. We’ll reject any returns submitted on the older templates.
To help you prepare for this change, we’ll publish new versions of the end of year return templates, technical notes and guidance pages in November 2026. This will give you 5 months’ notice to make any changes to non-standard templates you use to submit ERS end of year returns.
As part of the review, we’ll be making changes to the employment related securities checking service and the employment related securities submission service. This will allow you to use the new templates with these services.
We’ll publish more information about these changes in future bulletins.
Timetable for the changes
The planned timetable for this update is as follows (these dates may be subject to change).
2 November 2026
The following new versions of the ERS end of year return templates will be published on GOV.UK alongside the current versions. From 6 April 2027, we’ll remove the current versions.
| Template | Current version | New version |
|---|---|---|
| Company Share Option Plan — before the 2023 to 2024 tax year | Version 4 | Version 6 |
| Company Share Option Plan — from the 2023 to 2024 tax year | Version 5 | Version 7 |
| Enterprise Management Incentives | Version 4 | Version 7 |
| Share Incentive Plan | Version 4 | Version 7 |
| Save As You Earn | Version 4 | Version 7 |
| Non-tax advantaged share schemes — previously known as ‘Other’ | Version 4 | Version 7 |
We’ll also publish guidance notes and technical notes for the new end of year return templates.
1 February 2027
We’ll update the ERS checking service to allow employers to check the new versions of the ERS end of year return templates. You will not be able to check new templates before this date.
You’ll still be able check the current templates in the service until 5 April 2027.
6 April 2027
We’ll remove the current end of year return templates, supporting guidance and technical notes from GOV.UK.
From this date:
- you must submit any ERS activity for any tax year on the new templates
- we will not accept any reports using older templates
Changes to the end of year templates
To make the templates more accessible, we will:
- simplify the sheet titles
- format sheets as tables, with appropriate headers
- remove guidance notes in the templates, and replace them with links to relevant GOV.UK guidance
- remove abbreviations, replacing ‘e.g.’ with ‘for example’, and ‘£’ with ‘pound’
- standardise the font to Arial, size 12
- remove line spacing between the question numbers and questions
Changes to the guidance and technical notes
We’ll be making changes to the guidance and technical notes to reflect the accessibility changes in the end of year templates.
If you create your own templates in ODS format, your template headings must match the relevant technical notes. For example, you’ll need to make sure that:
- upper and lower case lettering matches the template
- date formats are shown in the same format as the template
- you do not use abbreviations instead of the wording shown in the template
- you spell everything correctly