Zero hour contracts are legally permissible in UK employment law through the Employment Rights Act 1996.Under these contracts, employers are not obliged to provide people with work, and employees do not have to accept any work they are offered.

1. Zero hours contracts in UK employee law
Zero hour contracts are legally permissible in UK employment law through the Employment Rights
Act 1996.Under these contracts, employers are not obliged to provide people with work, and
employees do not have to accept any work they are offered. Instead, employers and employees
have an on-call arrangement, with the employee agreeing that they will be available for work when
required. No particular working times or hours are specified and the worker is only paid for the
hours they work.
Although some people have called for a ban on zero hours contracts , they could be ideal for certain
demographics, such as retired people, students and people who require flexibility in their
employment, with Business Secretary Vince Cable confirming the government is not going to ban
these contracts.
Nonetheless, the government is holding a UK law review into this aspect of UK employment law
through the Zero Hours Employment Contracts Consultation. The government wishes to receive
evidence about the issues around zero hour’s contracts and responses about what the government
could do to deal with these issues.
The government confirmed it has no preferred options for this area of UK employment law, but that
it wishes to ensure that workers receive adequate protection but still can access the flexibility they
would otherwise receive through zero hours contracts.
A survey of employers by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) found that
approximately one million people could be on zero-hours contracts in the UK at the moment, with
around one-quarter of this number - 250,000 - describing themselves as on a zero-hours contract to
the Labour Force Survey. The CIPD suggests this discrepancy could be because many of these
workers describe themselves as casual workers or on-call workers, or use some other description.
This research also found that 60% of zero-hours workers say they are satisfied with their job,
compared with just 59% of the UK's labour force as a whole. Furthermore, 47% said they are
satisfied with not having any minimum contracted hours in their terms of employment, compared
with 27% who said they were unsatisfied with this situation.
London Assembly call for ban to GLA Group zero hours contracts
CIPD's research also unveiled some issues with zero hours contracts, however. Nearly half of all
workers said they either receive no notice (40%) or find out at the start of a shift (6%) that their
work for the day has been cancelled, with just 32% of employers having a policy for arranging zero
hours work and 34% having a policy for cancelling scheduled work. As a result, the London Assembly
said on January 15th
that Mayor of London Boris Johnson should ban zero hours contracts within the
Greater London Authority (GLA) and among its contractors and subcontractors. Fiona Twymcross AM
cited CIPD research that found 16% of zero hours workers said their employers fail to provide them
with enough working hours, saying this aspect of UK employment law promotes a "race to the
bottom" for worker rights.

2. Carol Smith studies UK employment law and reviews to UK law on behalf of a team of cash advance
solicitors and she solved many cases of 1500 cash advance. She has been researching employment
laws for many years after a friend suffered an injury due to workplace safety issues.