Third-Party Harassment: What FM Employers Must Do by 30 October 2026

From 30 October 2026, employers in Great Britain become liable when their people are harassed by someone they do not employ: a client, a customer, a contractor, a visitor or a member of the public. The change comes from the Employment Rights Act 2025, and the only defence is that the employer took all reasonable steps to prevent it.

Few sectors are as exposed as facilities management. FM teams work in other organisations' buildings, deal with the public every day, and often work alone, at night or out of hours. If you employ facilities, estates or workplace staff, or supply them to client sites, this is the moment to check your arrangements.

What changes on 30 October

Two things change on the same date.

• Liability for third-party harassment. Employers become liable for harassment of their employees by third parties. It covers harassment related to any relevant protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010, not just sexual harassment.
• A stronger prevention duty. Since 26 October 2024, employers have had to take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment of their employees. From 30 October that becomes a duty to take all reasonable steps.

"All reasonable steps" is a demanding test. It is not enough to have a policy on the intranet. A tribunal will ask what you knew about the risks in each workplace and what you actually did about them.

Why FM is more exposed than most

Think about where facilities people work and who they deal with:

• receptionists, front-of-house and security officers facing visitors and the public all day;
• engineers and cleaners working alone, early, late or overnight in occupied buildings;
• helpdesk teams taking calls from frustrated building users;
• staff on campuses, in hospitals, venues, retail and residential settings, where the public is part of the job;
• temporary and interim staff placed on a client's site, often with little induction.

Many of these people answer to one organisation while working in another's building. That makes it easy for a complaint to fall between the two, which is exactly the gap the new law is aimed at.

What all reasonable steps looks like in practice

The law does not give a checklist, and there is no statutory list of steps in force yet. But the direction from employment lawyers and Acas is consistent. For FM employers, the practical steps are:

1. Assess the risk by site and by role. Lone working, night shifts, public-facing roles, alcohol at events and contractor-heavy sites all raise the risk. Record the assessment and the controls you have agreed.
2. Update the policy to cover third parties. It should name clients, contractors, visitors and the public, and say what the organisation will do when one of them is the problem.
3. Make reporting work at 3am. A named person, a phone number that is answered out of hours and a promise that reporting will never cost anyone work.
4. Put it in your contracts. Client and contractor agreements should require co-operation with complaints, a named on-site contact and action against anyone found to have harassed your people.
5. Train supervisors, not just staff. The person running the shift needs to know how to respond on the night, how to record what happened and when to escalate.
6. Use the building itself. Lighting, CCTV, reception layout, lone-worker devices and access control are often in the FM leader's gift. They are part of the reasonable steps too.
7. Act on every report and keep a record. A confidential log of reports, actions and outcomes is your evidence that the system works.

If your people work on client sites

Service providers and employers of temporary or interim staff carry this risk on sites they do not control. Before an assignment starts, ask the client whether the person will work alone or out of hours, whether they will deal with the public, who their on-site contact is and whether the client's own policy and induction will be shared with them. Agree extra controls where the answers raise the risk, and give the worker your reporting route before their first shift.

A leadership test as well as a policy

The new duty also changes what good looks like in an FM leader. A Head of Facilities who has handled a complaint about a client's behaviour, protected a contractor's team on a difficult site, or redesigned a reception after an incident has evidence that matters now. When we assess senior FM candidates, we ask about exactly these situations, because the answers show judgement that a CV cannot.

If you are reviewing how your FM function handles these risks, or recruiting a leader to own them, talk to our team. This article is general information, not legal advice; take advice on your own contracts and policies.