Workplace harassment duties are changing: why local authorities need to prepare now

Several years ago, I carried out research for a thesis on sexual harassment and discrimination in the legal profession. Women contacted me anonymously with harrowing accounts, including:

• Two pregnant trainees in the same firm were encouraged by the senior partner to have abortions to enable them ‘to continue their careers’, this was common knowledge in the firm.
• A manager would lean up behind seated secretarial staff with his flies undone. His behaviour was excused by his line manager.
• A married applicant for a traineeship was rejected at interview. A senior partner told her “You can’t be home to cook his (the husband’s) dinner in the evening and do this job,” before putting a red line through the CV in front of her.
• A 20-year-old female was confronted by her male line manager and her grandparent manager to settle an argument between them as to whether she was a virgin, when reported it was downplayed.
• Catcalling by staff and customers of younger female staff in the workplace, causing great upset.
• ‘Old school’ male staff ‘banter’ which would be completely unacceptable today almost seen as common placed.

What stayed with me was not only the behaviour itself, but the extent to which it was normalised or excused by people who should have intervened. That goes to the heart of the new duty. Employers will be expected to think about what could happen and take steps to prevent it, rather than waiting for someone to complain.

What is changing?

From 30 October 2026, the legal test is expected to change from taking “reasonable steps” to taking “all reasonable steps”. It is a small change in wording, but not in practice. Employers will need to show what they have actually done to prevent harassment across the organisation. Having a policy on the intranet and asking staff to complete an annual training module is unlikely to be enough.

Acas has now updated its advice on preventing sexual harassment at work which can be found here.

The return of a clear focus on third-party harassment is particularly relevant to councils and public bodies. Staff can face inappropriate behaviour during housing visits, social care assessments, licensing inspections and enforcement work. It can also happen in contact centres, public meetings, libraries, leisure facilities, schools, depots and reception areas.

The person responsible may be a resident, service user, contractor or someone else who is not employed by the organisation. Employers have less control over those people, which makes the risk harder to manage, but it does not remove the need to think ahead, set expectations and act when something happens.

What should employers be doing now?

The emphasis is increasingly on prevention, clear records and named responsibility. Councils need to go further than a general HR policy update and look at how individual services really operate. Where are staff most exposed? What has happened before? Do employees know how to report it? And do managers know what they can do when the behaviour comes from a member of the public rather than a colleague?

• Review anti-harassment policies to make sure they expressly cover third-party harassment and reflect the realities of public-facing work.
• Assess risk service by service, including housing, social care, enforcement, customer services, libraries, leisure, education and contact with elected members.
• Train managers and staff to recognise harassment, report concerns and take appropriate action when the risk comes from residents, service users or contractors.
• Check that reporting routes work for frontline, mobile, hybrid and lone workers, not just employees based in an office.
• Keep proper records of risk assessments, training, reported incidents, investigations, safeguarding issues and the action taken afterwards.
• Make sure senior leaders and service managers understand their role. A slow, passive or inconsistent response can create legal risk and damage trust among staff.

Don’t wait until October

The enhanced duty is likely to make harassment claims harder to defend where prevention has been handled as a one-off compliance exercise. For local authorities, the exposure is greater because of the range of services they run, the number of people their staff deal with and the public scrutiny that can follow an employment dispute.

Waiting until October 2026 will leave too much to do at once. Councils and other public sector employers should start looking at risks across their services now. That means checking reporting routes, updating training, making responsibilities clear and keeping evidence of what has been done.

This is partly about legal compliance, but it is also about whether staff believe they will be taken seriously when they report unacceptable behaviour. Policies matter, but what managers and organisations do in practice matters more.

Nina Seymour is Head of Invicta Law’s Employment, Pensions and Education Group. She is an experienced employment solicitor with a long career supporting local authorities and senior officers.