Good luck to all our friends in HR, recruitment and IT Project resourcing.
From April 2026, the Employment Rights Act will increase both the cost and procedural complexity of employing people directly, while also extending important new protections to employees. At the same time, new tax rules introduce joint and several liability for unpaid contractor and umbrella PAYE.
At Stoneseed, we employ all our project talent, available to you via our Project Management as a Service (PMaaS) model, who have been helping businesses and organisations to deliver business change through IT for almost two decades. We feel your pain.
PMaaS allows you to buy project delivery outcomes – without inheriting every new employment‑law obligation.
WHAT ACTUALLY CHANGES IN APRIL 2026?
For employers with significant IT and business change teams, three of April’s reforms feel especially significant:
1 – Day‑one family rights
Eligible employees will gain day‑one rights to paternity leave and unpaid parental leave, and the current bar on taking paternity leave after shared parental leave will be removed. That is good news for your staff, but it makes resourcing critical roles on long programmes more complex, because periods of absence can legitimately arise much earlier in tenure.
Delivery impact: Key project roles can now be legitimately absent much earlier in tenure, increasing resourcing volatility on long-running programmes.
“The changes to day-one family rights mean organisations can no longer rely on a ‘bedding in’ period before absence becomes more likely,” Nickie Elenor, Employment Law Solicitor at Guardian Law & People Management, told us. “For project delivery teams, that fundamentally changes how you think about role criticality and succession planning. You need to design for more types of absence, with associated costs, from the start.”
2 – A doubled penalty for poor collective consultation
The protective award for failure to collectively consult in large‑scale redundancies or restructuring will double, from 90 days’ pay to 180 days’ pay. For any employer contemplating changes to a sizeable PMO or internal delivery function over the next few years, the cost of getting the process wrong will be materially higher.
Delivery impact: Any mis-timed or poorly governed change to large delivery teams carries a materially higher financial downside, even where the underlying business case is sound.
“Doubling the protective award is a change that will keep finance directors awake at night,” Nickie warns. “There will be significant penalties if you get collective consultation wrong. For a restructure affecting many people, 180 days pay per employee is a significant exposure that can completely overwhelm the business case for the change itself.”
3 – Joint PAYE liability with agencies and umbrellas
From 6 April 2026, recruitment agencies and end clients will become jointly and severally liable, alongside umbrella companies, for PAYE and National Insurance compliance in the temporary labour market. In practice, HMRC will be able to pursue an end client for the full tax debt if an umbrella fails to pay the correct tax or NICs, fundamentally changing the risk profile of contractor supply chains.
Delivery impact: End clients can no longer rely on intermediaries to absorb payroll-compliance risk in contractor-heavy delivery models.
“The joint liability provisions effectively make the end client a guarantor for every umbrella company in their contractor supply chain,” Nickie explains.
“Many organisations have built their flexible resourcing models on the assumption that tax compliance was someone else’s problem. From April, that assumption is legally wrong.”
AND STILL TO COME:
In January 2027 – Earlier access to unfair dismissal rights!
Next year, unfair dismissal protections will apply much earlier in employment, and the practical margin for correcting a poor hiring decision during delivery will be materially reduced.
Of course, these changes are not barriers to hiring, they do raise the stakes if you depend heavily on in‑house project teams and/or a rotating bench of agency‑supplied contractors.
TRADITIONAL IT PROJECT RESOURCING MODELS ARE VULNERABLE
For CIOs and change leaders, these reforms land on top of familiar pressures (skills shortages, capability gaps, etc) and the most common resourcing models are starting to creak in different ways.
1 – Heavy permanent headcount becomes harder to flex
An internal PMO and project delivery team gives control and continuity, but now carries more day‑one absence costs, more complex leave patterns, and a sharply higher downside if future restructures or location changes are mishandled.
The cost of mis‑scoping a permanent team, too big today, too small tomorrow, is no longer limited to salary and redundancy; it can include up to 180 days’ pay per affected employee as a protective award.
2 – Contractor‑heavy models look legally exposed
Under the new joint and several liability rules, “hiring” project managers and BAs via umbrella agencies no longer allows end clients to stand at arm’s length from payroll compliance. If an umbrella underpays tax or NIC, an agency or end client can be pursued for the full amount, which is a very different risk profile from that envisaged by many when they built contractor‑dependent delivery models.
3 – HR and legal capacity become a bottleneck
Every complex worker scenario, flexible working patterns, intermittent absences under new family and sick‑pay rules, restructures, and contractor supply‑chain oversight, consumes specialist HR and legal time. When capacity does not scale at the same rate as the project portfolio, the organisation’s ability to manage employment risk quietly becomes a key constraint on delivery.
In short, traditional resourcing solutions (“hire an in-house team” or “build a contractor squad”) now come with new costs and risks.
PMaaS: OUTCOMES, NOT HEADCOUNT
Project Management as a Service reframes the question from “who do we employ?” to “what outcomes do we need, on what timescale, and with what risk profile?”
Organisations contract a managed delivery capability, typically covering roles such as project managers, programme managers, business analysts and PMO, with clear scope, SLAs and governance built in – rather than assembling individuals one by one.
In the context of the April 2026 changes, three PMaaS features stand out:
1 – You buy outcomes via a services contract, not individual employment relationships or the risks that come with them:
At Stoneseed, we employ our own people and manage the full web of family leave, sick pay, consultation duties, and worker‑status issues within our operating model.
As the client, you buy a service outcome via a commercial contract, rather than becoming the employer of every individual delivering the project.
2 – Contractor‑style flexibility without umbrella‑style exposure:
Because PMaaS is structured as a services engagement, not a chain of individual umbrella assignments, the new joint PAYE liability rules for the umbrella market become less central to the client’s risk analysis. Due diligence still matters, but it is focused on the provider’s financial robustness and compliance track record, not on policing multiple layers of agencies and umbrella companies in the temporary labour supply chain.
“PMaaS fundamentally changes where the risk sits as you’re contracting for delivery outcomes with a single, identifiable supplier who manages its own employment obligations. That’s a completely different risk profile from building a resourcing model where you become jointly liable for tax compliance across a fragmented network of umbrella companies,” says Nickie.
3 – Built‑in scalability without collective consultation:
Scaling a PMaaS engagement up or down is handled through contract governance, notice periods and service levels, not redundancy programmes and collective consultation duties. That means you can increase or reduce project throughput without crossing thresholds that trigger the now‑harsher protective award regime.
For CIOs, this combines governance and predictability with the financial agility of temporary talent, without adding employment‑law complexity each time the portfolio flexes.
CONCLUSION: Use April 2026 as a board‑level narrative moment
April 2026 is not just a compliance milestone. It is a strategic decision point.
Organisations that act now, with the right legal advice and the right delivery model, will be better placed.
These are externally‑driven events, not a “consultant sales pitch”. They are a powerful context for a strategic resourcing conversation.
Framing PMaaS as a way to future‑proof your organisation against further waves of employment reform, while still delivering your digital roadmap, resonates strongly with boards wary of both cost and legal exposure.
Find out how Stoneseed’s PMaaS can help keep employment‑law complexity where it belongs, as far away from IT project delivery as possible, call today on 01623 723910 or contact us here.
More about Project Management as a Service from Stoneseed
Sources
Looking Ahead to April – The Employment Rights Bill
The Year Ahead in UK Employment Law: An Overview of Changes Scheduled in 2026
What is Joint & Several Liability and What is Changing in 2026?