Employment law changes and stricter corporate criminal liability for senior management wrongdoing are among key issues impacting UK general counsel and corporate secretaries this year, according to a report from White & Case.
The 2026 Horizon Scanning Mid Year Update report outlined 10 governance trends that need to be on in-house legal teams’ radars in the second half of the year. Top of that list is enhanced employer obligations and employee protections that are due to come into force in October. Those include stronger protections against harassment, an extension of employment tribunal time limits and changes to trade union rules, such as a requirement to provide workers with a written statement confirming their right to join a trade union.
The Financial Reporting Council has also updated guidance around the UK’s Corporate Governance Code’s ‘comply or explain’ mechanism, which was intended to give companies more governance flexibility but ended up being a rigid compliance exercise with boilerplate disclosures and ineffective reporting, White & Case says.
The new guidance focuses on what a good explanation of any departure from the code looks like and what those explanations should include, such as providing clear rationale for the approach taken and whether that approach is time-limited or indefinite.
Third on the list is senior managers and corporate criminal liability. Under the Crime and Policing Act 2026, if a senior manager of a company commits any crime related to the scope of their work, the company can be held criminally liable too, White & Case notes.
The report said: “Companies will need to draw on compliance best practice to protect themselves. A prudent step would be for companies to broaden their risk assessment exercises to ensure they fully understand the nature and scale of liability risk, and take effective steps to mitigate it.”
For regulated businesses, another trend GCs need to watch out for is the Financial Conduct Authority’s oversight remit extending beyond financial matters from September to cover matters such as workplace bullying and harassment. As part of that rule change, the FCA expects senior managers to take reasonable measures to prevent non-financial misconduct.
Also on the agenda in the coming months are proposed updates to EU/UK merger guidelines; new details around what audit committees want directors to understand; guidance around generative AI use in audit processes; the extraterritorial reach of new EU AI and cybersecurity regulations; a new voluntary cyber resilience pledge introduced by the UK government; and a renewed push to improve the ethnic diversity of boards and senior management.
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