The seafarer protection provisions take effect on 30 October 2026

The seafarer protections arriving this year are section 56 and Schedule 5 of the Employment Rights Act 2025 (c. 36), and section 56 reads “Schedule 5 amends the Seafarers’ Wages Act 2023.” The day is appointed by the Employment Rights Act 2025 (Commencement No. 6 and Transitional and Saving Provisions) Regulations 2026, SI 2026/1065, made on 1 October 2026. Regulation 3 reads “The following provisions of the 2025 Act come into force on 30th October 2026—” and its paragraph (d) is “section 56 and Schedule 5 (seafarers’ wages and working conditions);”. The same regulation commences the sexual harassment and trade union provisions on that day.

An Act about wages becomes an Act about working conditions

Paragraph 24(1) of Schedule 5 renames it: “The Seafarers’ Wages Act 2023 may be cited as the Seafarers (Wages and Working Conditions) Act 2023.” Paragraph 10 inserts a new Part 3 on seafarers’ working conditions, and paragraph 9 a Chapter on remuneration regulations. The 2023 Act gave a harbour one thing to ask an operator for, a national minimum wage equivalence declaration. From 30 October 2026 there are three: equivalence, remuneration and safe working.

Which services the Act reaches

Section 1(1) of the 2023 Act: “This Act applies to a service for the carriage of persons or goods by ship, with or without vehicles, between a place outside the United Kingdom and a place in the United Kingdom.” Section 1(2) leaves out a service for leisure or recreation and a service provided by a fishing vessel. Paragraph 3 of Schedule 5 rewrites the definition of ship to cover hovercraft and a ship registered in a State other than the United Kingdom. The duty follows the service rather than the size of the operator, so a single-vessel freight route reads the same date as a fleet.

Rest, fatigue and training become declarable

New section 4E lets regulations specify conditions on the working pattern and rest requirements of seafarers, including “their maximum periods of work in a specified period” and “their minimum periods of rest in a specified period”. Section 4E(3) and (4) reach risks arising from fatigue and let the regulations require a fatigue management plan, with its contents fixed by reference to a named document. Section 4E(5) covers training for the safety of the ship and of the people on it, and section 4G(7) applies the reading to operation outside United Kingdom territorial waters.

The harbour is where it is enforced

Section 4F puts the first move on the harbour authority: where it has reasonable grounds to believe that ships providing a service to which safe working regulations apply will enter, or have entered, its harbour on at least 120 occasions during a relevant year, it must request a safe working declaration from the operator. Operating a service inconsistently with a declaration is an offence under section 5. A failure to provide a requested declaration in time can bring a surcharge under section 6, and section 11(1) then requires the authority to refuse harbour access to a ship on that service while the surcharge is unpaid and the period for paying it has passed, apart from the cases section 11(4) sets out.

What an operator can have ready

• Count harbour calls per service across the relevant year, because 120 occasions is the number that triggers a request.
• Decide which of your services carry persons or goods between a place outside the United Kingdom and a place in it.
• Write the working pattern and the rest arrangements for each service down, so a declaration has a record behind it.
• Begin a fatigue management plan, since section 4E(4) lets the regulations call for one and fix its contents.
• Check the flag of every ship on the service, because the recast definition covers ships registered elsewhere.

The Employment Rights Act 2025 system

Pinning this one date down took a commencement instrument, an Act and a Schedule to it. A ComplianceSME account is where that work has already been done: the toolkit is built from the Act itself, runs as a guided interview and returns the documents the law names for your records.

Verified 10 October 2026 against the Employment Rights Act 2025, the Seafarers’ Wages Act 2023 and SI 2026/1065 as published by the King’s Printer of Acts of Parliament.

More deadline answers: Platform Work Directive, 2 December 2026 · Product Liability Directive, 9 December 2026 · All three with their dates

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