From October 2026, haulage companies will need to think more carefully about what happens to their employed drivers when they are working away from the company’s own yard.
That includes time spent at ports, warehouses, distribution centres, factories, construction sites, customers’ premises and other delivery or collection points.
The change does not mean that hauliers will automatically be liable whenever a driver encounters an objectionable person. It does mean that employers will need to show that they have considered the risks and taken reasonable, practical steps to protect their employees.
What is Changing in October 2026?
Section 21 of the Employment Rights Act 2025 amends the Equality Act 2010 by introducing explicit protection from harassment by third parties.
A third party is someone who is neither the employee’s employer nor another employee of that employer. For a lorry driver, that could include:
- Gatehouse and security staff
- Warehouse and loading personnel
- Employees of a customer or consignee
- Port and terminal personnel
- Contractors working at a delivery site
- Agency workers employed by another organisation
- Customers and members of the public
The employer may be treated as permitting harassment where the employee is harassed in the course of their employment and the employer failed to take all reasonable steps to prevent it.
The protection is not confined to sexual harassment. It covers sexual harassment and harassment connected to the Equality Act characteristics of age, disability, gender reassignment, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation.
There does not need to have been two or three previous incidents before the provision can apply. In principle, the first incident could be relevant, particularly where the risk was already foreseeable.
However, the Government’s guidance is also clear that employers will not be expected to take unworkable steps, predict something wholly unforeseeable or control every private conversation taking place at a customer’s premises. What is reasonable will depend on the employer’s size, resources, sector, working environment and the nature and frequency of contact with third parties.
Why This Reaches Further in Haulage
A driver may visit several independently operated premises in a single shift. The transport company may not employ or manage anyone at those locations. In some cases, it may not even hold the direct commercial contract with the depot being visited.
Despite that, the driver remains at work.
The employer’s responsibility does not simply stop at the yard gate. The question will be what the haulage company could reasonably have done before the incident, and what it did when a risk or previous incident became known.
Harassment Does Not Mean Every Disagreement or Rude Remark
Transport businesses should not confuse unlawful harassment with every argument, delay, unhelpful gatehouse interaction or instance of poor customer service.
To meet the Equality Act definition, the unwanted conduct must be connected to a relevant protected characteristic, be sexual in nature, or involve less favourable treatment connected to someone accepting or rejecting certain harassment.
The conduct must have the purpose or effect of violating someone’s dignity or creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment. Where the complaint concerns the effect of the conduct, a tribunal must also consider whether it was reasonable for it to have that effect.
A gatehouse employee being abrupt about a booking reference will not automatically constitute harassment. Racist abuse, sexual comments, disability-related mockery or repeated homophobic remarks potentially could.
Ordinary bullying or aggressive behaviour may still require action under health and safety, contractual, welfare or management procedures, even where it does not meet the Equality Act definition.
What is the minimum a haulage company will need to do?
There is currently no statutory checklist which guarantees compliance. It would therefore be wrong to claim that completing a particular form or purchasing one training course will provide complete legal protection.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission’s technical guidance states that there is no prescribed minimum. The test is objective and depends on the circumstances of the employer.
For a haulage company regularly sending employed drivers to third-party premises, a credible starting point is likely to include:
1. A transport-specific risk assessment
The company should identify where drivers interact with people outside its employment.
This should cover more than the company’s own yard. It may need to consider:
- Regular customer sites
- Ports and terminals
- Shared transport yards
- Warehouses and fulfilment centres
- Construction and industrial sites
- Overnight parking and rest locations connected to the work
- Lone working and night deliveries
- Sites where drivers experience long waits or confrontational interactions
- Locations where previous concerns have been reported
The assessment does not need to predict the behaviour of every individual. It should identify realistic working situations in which harassment could occur.
2. A policy which covers work away from the yard
The policy should expressly say that harassment by customers, contractors, site staff and other third parties will not be tolerated.
It should explain:
- What harassment means
- Which protected characteristics are covered
- The difference between harassment, sexual harassment and general bullying
- That the policy applies during deliveries, collections and other work away from the company’s premises
- How a driver can report an incident
- What the company will do after receiving a report
- That drivers will not be penalised for raising a genuine concern
A generic office policy copied from the internet is unlikely to address the realities faced by drivers.
3. A reporting method drivers can actually use
Drivers should not have to wait until they return to the yard several days later or complete a complicated HR form.
A practical system could allow reporting through:
- A dedicated telephone number
- A named transport manager
- A simple online form
- The driver app already used for job information
- Email or a recognised company messaging channel
- A private conversation at the end of the shift
The system should allow the driver to record the site, date, time, people involved, witnesses and what was said or done. Immediate danger or suspected criminal behaviour should still be reported to the police or site security as appropriate.
4. An incident log
Reports involving customer and third-party sites should be recorded consistently.
This allows the employer to recognise patterns that might otherwise remain hidden. Three drivers may each have reported a problem with the same individual without realising that the others have experienced it too.
A useful record should include:
- The location
- The customer or site operator
- The individual or department involved, where known
- The nature of the allegation
- Any protected characteristic potentially involved
- Action taken by the haulier
- The customer’s response
- Whether the matter has happened before
- The decision about future visits
Personal data and allegations will need to be handled carefully and only shared where there is a proper reason to do so.
5. Driver and manager training
Drivers need to know what they can report and managers need to know what to do with the report.
Training should use real transport examples rather than generic corporate scenarios. These might include conduct at a gatehouse, in a loading area, over a depot intercom, during an overnight delivery or within a shared transport office.
Managers should understand that dismissing a complaint as ‘yard banter’ is not an investigation.
6. A procedure for contacting the customer
The company should establish who will raise an incident with the customer, depot or site operator and how quickly that will happen.
The first response will not always require cancelling a contract. Depending on the seriousness and available evidence, it might involve:
- Asking the customer to investigate
- Requesting that a different member of staff deals with the company’s drivers
- Agreeing a different reporting or loading procedure
- Changing the delivery time or location
- Issuing formal expectations about conduct
- Temporarily stopping a particular driver from attending
- In serious or repeated cases, suspending visits or reconsidering the commercial relationship
The company should record why it chose a particular response.
The Known-Site Problem
The greatest risk is likely to arise where a haulage company knows that a location or individual presents a recurring problem and does little or nothing about it.
Suppose several drivers report racist comments from the same person at a regular collection point. The reports are discussed in the transport office but never formally recorded or raised with the customer. Drivers continue to be allocated to the site without warning, support or any attempt to change the situation.
In those circumstances, it may be difficult for the employer to demonstrate that all reasonable steps were taken.
The position would look very different if the reports were recorded, investigated, escalated to the customer, followed up and considered when allocating future work.
Hauliers Cannot Solve This Alone
This change should not be treated solely as a problem for hauliers. It requires cooperation across the transport and logistics chain.
Warehouse operators, ports, customers, freight forwarders and principal contractors should make it clear that visiting drivers are covered by their site conduct expectations. Visiting drivers should also be expected to treat depot employees properly.
Practical cooperation could include:
- Named contacts for reporting conduct at each site
- Anti-harassment clauses in customer and subcontractor agreements
- A site code of conduct covering employees, contractors and visiting drivers
- Clear escalation routes between transport managers and depot management
- Proper investigation of complaints involving another company’s employees
- Sharing relevant safety information where repeated behaviour creates a continuing risk
- Removing or restricting individuals who present a substantiated risk
- Including treatment of visiting drivers in procurement and supplier reviews
Some large customers are likely to add third-party conduct requirements to supplier contracts and site rules. Hauliers may also begin asking customers how incidents involving their drivers will be handled before accepting regular work.
What Will Realistically Change?
Most transport companies will not appoint a full-time harassment officer or stop delivering to a customer after one unsubstantiated complaint.
The more realistic changes will be operational:
- Driver handbooks will be updated to cover third-party premises.
- Driver inductions will explain how to report incidents from the road.
- Transport managers will be expected to record welfare and conduct complaints rather than dealing with everything informally.
- Customer contracts and service agreements will increasingly contain behaviour and escalation clauses.
- Repeat problem locations will appear on company risk registers.
- Serious allegations will be escalated between senior managers rather than left between a driver and a traffic planner.
- Some customers will be asked to ensure a particular person has no contact with the affected driver.
- In exceptional cases, hauliers may refuse to send employees to a location until a risk has been addressed.
Small operators will not be expected to reproduce the systems of a national logistics group. They will still need a proportionate process that works.
A five-vehicle haulier might use a written risk assessment, a concise policy, a named director for reporting, a secure incident register and direct customer escalation. A business employing hundreds of drivers across multiple depots is likely to need a more structured system, including central reporting, trend monitoring, manager training and formal contractual arrangements.
A Positive Opportunity for the Industry
Handled properly, this does not need to become another layer of paperwork disconnected from running vehicles.
It is an opportunity to address a longstanding weakness in transport operations: the treatment of drivers when they arrive at premises where they have little authority, limited information and no direct relationship with the people controlling access, loading or unloading.
A driver should be able to report a serious incident without being told to ignore it because ‘that site is always like that’. At the same time, customers should have a clear route for reporting unacceptable conduct by visiting drivers.
The practical aim is not to make every difficult interaction into a legal dispute. It is to identify genuine risks earlier, deal with repeated problems and prevent employees from being continually sent into situations that the business already knows are unacceptable.
What Haulage Companies Should Do Before October 2026
Transport businesses should begin with six questions:
Locations
Where do our drivers regularly interact with people outside our employment?
Risk
Have we assessed the risk of harassment at those locations?
Reporting
Can a driver report an incident quickly and privately while away from the yard?
Management
Do our managers know how to record, investigate and escalate a report?
Patterns
Can we identify repeat complaints involving the same site or person?
Customers
Do our customers know what we expect them to do if one of their employees harasses one of our drivers?
If the answer to several of those questions is no, work is needed before October.
The final interpretation of ‘all reasonable steps’ will develop through updated official guidance and, eventually, employment tribunal decisions. The Government has said that further support will be provided, while more detailed regulations defining reasonable steps are expected later, currently indicated for 2027 or 2028.
The direction of travel is already clear. Haulage companies will need to look beyond conduct in their own yards and demonstrate how they protect employed drivers throughout the working day.
Sources and Important Note
This article provides general information and is not a substitute for advice on a specific employment matter.