Raising The Bar: Are You Ready for the Changes to Workplace Harassment Law?
Since October 2024, employers have had a legal duty to take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment at work.
From 30 October 2026, that duty will be strengthened. Employers will need to take “all reasonable steps” to prevent sexual harassment, while new obligations will also protect workers from harassment by third parties such as customers, clients and members of the public.
But what does this mean in practice?
From reasonable to “all reasonable” steps.
There is no one-size-fits-all checklist. What is reasonable will depend on an organisation’s size, sector, resources, working environment and the risks faced by its workers.
Employers should be able to demonstrate that they have proactively identified risks and taken appropriate action. This could include:
· Risk assessments: Identifying potential hotspots, including lone working, power imbalances, alcohol at work events, customer-facing roles, travel, remote working and social media
· Policies and procedures: Ensuring anti-harassment, bullying, grievance and disciplinary policies are effective, current and communicated to all workers
· Training: Making sure staff and managers understand what harassment looks like, how to raise concerns and how to respond appropriately to disclosures
· Listening to workers: Using one-to-ones, staff surveys, exit interviews and other feedback to identify concerns and monitor workplace culture
· Clear reporting: Providing accessible reporting routes and responding to concerns promptly, fairly and sensitively, with appropriate safeguards against further harassment or victimisation
· Third-party risks: Considering how workers may be exposed to harassment from customers, clients, suppliers, contractors or members of the public.
The message is clear: prevention needs to be active, ongoing and evidenced — not simply a policy sitting in a handbook.
What changes in October 2026?
The Employment Rights Act 2025 will:
☑️Strengthen the preventative duty.
☑️Employers will need to take all reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment of their workers.
☑️Introduce third-party harassment protections.
☑️Employers will have an obligation not to permit harassment of their workers by third parties.
☑️Increase the potential consequences.
Where a tribunal finds that an employer has breached the preventative duty following a successful sexual harassment claim, compensation can be increased by up to 25%.
These changes build on wider reforms, including stronger whistleblowing protection for workers who report sexual harassment, introduced in April 2026.
How can RSVP help?
The Rape and Sexual Violence Project (RSVP) provides free counselling and advocacy for survivors of sexual violence and abuse across Birmingham and Solihull. Our specialist training team also works with organisations to help prevent sexual harassment and create safer, more inclusive workplaces.
Support can include:
Policy review and gap analysis – reviewing existing policies and procedures and identifying areas for improvement.
Workplace risk assessments – helping organisations identify higher-risk roles, environments and situations and develop practical action plans.
Tailored training – providing staff, manager and leadership training on harassment, bystander intervention, responding to disclosures and creating positive workplace cultures.
Reporting and cultural audits – reviewing reporting systems, consulting with staff and helping organisations identify and address cultural or systemic concerns.
Counselling support – through RSVP’s sister organisation, GINA, counselling packages can also be arranged for employees affected by sexual violence and harassment.
The RSVP team has supported organisations including Birmingham Women’s and Children’s Hospital, Aston University, West Midlands Business Festival, the Solicitors Regulation Authority, BHSF, Colmore BID and Safer Dance – Night Time Economies Project.
Income from RSVP’s consultancy and training services helps fund its vital counselling and advocacy services.
Scan the QR code or click here to see all our upcoming training sessions.
Is your organisation ready?
The move from “reasonable steps” to “all reasonable steps” is more than a change in wording. It is a prompt for employers to look closely at their workplace culture, understand where risks exist and make sure prevention is embedded in everyday practice.
RSVP can help you understand the risks, strengthen your approach and build safer workplaces.
For more information, contact trainer@rsvporg.co.uk
Thank You Curry for Charity: The Taste of Giving
In July, we were delighted to hear from Fiza and Kamran, the kind souls behind Curry For Charity. For many years, they have been supporting local and national causes, using their love language of food to do good and raise money for essential services.
Within a month, the fantastic team put together the fundraising event in support of RSVP: a heart-warming evening of delicious curries and community spirit. The taste of giving can fill every soul!
Fiza believes that food is such an underrated tool to bring together communities, to break and overcome barriers that continue to fracture our society right now.
“We started doing Curry For Charity 14 years ago, when we hardly had anything ourselves, but we didn’t let that weigh us down. We always knew we want to give back to the community in some way and we are achieving that with our love language: Food,” Fiza said.
People like Fiza and Kamran bring hope in every plate. And we feel so honoured to have them champion our cause!
We have raised £200 in support of survivors! That means 20 children can have toys or therapeutic resources to help with their healing. Or we can fund travel tickets for 36 adults so they can access our vital support services.
A big thank you to all who joined us for a wonderful dinner and helped us raise funds during such a difficult funding period in RSVP. To know more about our funding situation, check out our Recovery Appeal.
Every pound shows that survivors have a safe space, with RSVP.
Jo’s 100 Miles Dog Walking Challenge
Strengthening the RSVP Recovery Appeal is the 100 Miles Dog Walking Challenge by our dear supporter and colleague, Jo.
Joanne has taken on a brilliant challenge with her two paw-some buddies Pablo and Alfie. They are walking across various locations in the West Midlands and Wales over the month to complete a hundred miles in support of RSVP.
The challenge is running every day throughout July, with miles being added daily, on her page below.
We’re so grateful for her dedication (and her four-legged companions too!). Together, they’re putting in the miles to raise both funds and awareness for our work.
If you want to consider taking on a challenge of your own and raise funds for RSVP, we’d love to make it happen! Write to us at info@rsvporg.co.uk today.
Update: Extension due to Heat Wave
The red weather alert and high temperatures are impacting everyone in the UK, including Jo and her loving pets. That’s why the 100 Miles Dog Walking Challenge has to be paused till the weather cools down.
Read Jo’s update in her own words:
We thank Jo for sticking through this tough time, and will keep supporters posted when they are back on the walks again!
September will offer a pleasant weather to join Jo for the last few miles of the challenge. Keep a look out for her invitaton to join the trio for the final walks. Please come along, if you can, to help Jo finish strong.
Update: The RSVP Recovery Appeal Going Strong
Everyone from RSVP, and the survivors we stand alongside with, are deeply grateful for your continued support. Whether you’ve been with us for years or have only recently joined our community, thank you for choosing to stand with survivors of sexual violence.
Your solidarity strengthens our work and reminds survivors that they are not alone.
Two Months of Impact
In June, we launched our RSVP Recovery Appeal to recover from our funding crisis. We aimed to raise £5,000 by August to rebuild our vital services, and we’ve been overwhelmed by the response so far.
Thanks to your kindness and support, we’ve now reached 70% of our target. This is a fantastic milestone and a testament to the strength of the community standing alongside us, for survivors.
A big thank you! We truly couldn’t do this without you.
Extending The Appeal
Due to your generous support, we are now extending our appeal for one more month. We are very close to our goal, so let’s reach the finish line together.
If you’ve already donated, thank you. If you’ve been considering making a gift, now is the perfect time. We look forward to turn this 70% into 100%. Together, we can make our recovery a reality.
Some of our dearest supporters have taken by their own ways to fundraise in support of our Recovery Appeal. For instance, check out the 100 Miles Dog Walking Challenge by Jo here.
If you also have something in mind to support RSVP, we’d love to work with you! Write to us at info@rsvporg.co.uk today.
Launching: The Recovery Appeal
Help RSVP Recover and Rebuild Support for Survivors
Survivors are turning to our charity in record numbers, at the very moment we’re facing one of the most challenging and destabilising periods in our history. To continue to be there for every person who needs us, we urgently need your support.
In the last year alone, over 1,500 adults needed counselling, the highest we’ve ever seen. As a result from April, we sadly paused to new referrals to this service.
Like many charities, RSVP has been hit by a deepening funding crisis and rising costs. Without extra, urgent funding, more people may face even longer waits for the specialist care they deserve.
The RSVP Recovery Appeal
Our Recovery Appeal is about rebuilding together. With your support, we’re aiming to raise £5,000 by August, so survivors in our community can continue to find safety, hope and healing, with our support.
Every pound raised will rebuild the core services that survivors rely on, across Birmingham and Solihull.
So, can we count on your help to turn this setback into strength, for the people who need us most?
About RSVP
For over 45 years, RSVP has been a crucial safe space for survivors.
We provide bold, believing, and compassionate support to help children and adult survivors of sexual abuse move towards safer, more hopeful futures.
We centre survivor voices and work to challenge victim-blaming, creating a space where people are believed, heard, and never held responsible for the harm done to them.
How Your Donation Helps
Our demand has increased, but our funding hasn’t. Your support will make an immediate and meaningful difference to people in crisis.
Here’s what your donations can achieve:
- £10- Helps rebuild our therapeutic resources for children
- £25- Helps restore helpline sessions to provide emotional support
- £50- Helps restore our counselling & advocacy support for child and adult survivors
- £100- Helps rebuild essential support, at a time when more survivors needs us than ever before.
Every pound you give helps change a life.
Changing the Tide Together
Thanks to supporters like you, we’ve been able to continue our services. However, with rising demand and increasing costs, we need your help.
The Recovery Appeal is one of the ways we can ensure RSVP continues its mission to believe and stand with survivors. Over the next few months, we will keep you updated about our appeal and the progress we’re making together.
You can also stay connected via our WhatsApp channel for real-time updates, inspiring survivor stories and other news across RSVP.
Important Update: A Message from Our CEO, Lisa
In this update, I have some difficult news to share with you and I want to speak to you directly and honestly.
The last few months have been the most challenging and destabilising time at RSVP.
We’ve been hit by a deepening funding crisis, at the same time as more survivors than ever have reached out for our support.
Demand for RSVP services has risen sharply, costs have increased and we have had to make painful, difficult decisions to protect RSVP’s survival.
These decisions have affected survivors, our dedicated team and the survivor community.
The Decisions We Have Made So Far
• Closed two of our services: our long-running social wellbeing groups, established in 2008, and our Sex Worker ISVA Service, established in 2017.
• Reduced other services, including pausing new referrals into our Adult Counselling Service from April.
• Made changes to our Independent Sexual Violence Advocacy (ISVA) Services, as ISVA/Advocates have caseloads higher than they should be. This is impacted by survivors being forced to wait longer for justice, due to the years that they wait for a court date, meaning they need ISVA support for longer.
These decisions affect real people, survivors who have finally reached out, and our dedicated team who give everything they have to this work.
All while, every single day, we continue to see the power of RSVP’s specialist support.
🙍🏽♀️Why We Keep Going: A Survivor’s Words
This is our why and why RSVP exists.
This is why we are determined to recover and rebuild.
For survivors 💜
🚀Launching Soon…
In June, we will launch something important for survivors, so do look out for more information in our next newsletter.
Its focus will be to:
• Start to rebuild our core services, and ensure that RSVP continues to stand with child and adult survivors, from Birmingham and Solihull.
• Rebuild hope, strengthen the survivor community, and ensure survivors are not alone.
Stay Connected: Join Our New WhatsApp Channel ✅
We have now launched a new WhatsApp Channel where you can follow:
- Real stories of impact.
- Behind-the-scenes insights.
- Updates on survivors’ needs.
- Ways to get involved with RSVP 🫱🏽🫲🏻
It’s a simple way to stay close to the work you care about. Scan the QR code or click the button below.
Other Ways to Help 🤗
We know that our supporters like to support RSVP, in many different ways.
This is why we have created a variety of meaningful ways to support survivors using what you already have:
• Corporate connections: Can you introduce us to your workplace CSR team or suggest RSVP as a charity partner?
• 🥿👚📱Fundraise with what’s at home: Can you sell or donate items you no longer need? Look out soon for information on our new schemes where if you donate good quality second-hand bras and smart phones (and other tech) to RSVP, it could raise funds for us.
• Share our messages: Can you share and help us use our voice and survivors’ voices to help us reach new people, who may never have heard of RSVP.
• Champion our work: Can you talk about why specialist support matters, especially now? 🗣️
Every single action strengthens RSVP’s support, care and community around survivors.
Looking Ahead With Determination 🌟
This is a tough moment, for survivors, for our dedicated team, and for RSVP. However, we believe it can also be a moment of change, connection and hope. RSVP has always been built on people who show big-hearted, bold, belief in survivors. These values will carry us through this period of recovery.
Thank you for caring, for continuing to support survivors and for standing with us.
With gratitude,
Lisa Thompson
CEO, Rape and Sexual Violence Project.
Support RSVP in the My Favourite Voucher Codes Charity Poll- February 2026
This February, we are proud to share that RSVP is taking part in the My Favourite Voucher Codes Charity Poll 2026. It’s a fantastic opportunity for our community to support our work in a simple, free and powerful way — by voting for us.
Every month, 4 charities are chosen to take part in the My Favourite Voucher Codes charity poll. At the end of the month, the charity with the most public votes will receive 20% of My Favourite Voucher Codes’ profits for the month, and that donation could make a real, lasting difference to the people we support every day.
In this article, we want to explain what the poll is, why it matters, how you can vote for RSVP, and how your support can help us continue our vital work.
About RSVP
The Rape and Sexual Violence Project (RSVP) is a charity dedicated to supporting people affected by sexual violence, abuse and exploitation across Birmingham and Solihull. Every day, we work alongside survivors, families, and communities to provide safety, understanding, and practical help when it is needed most.
Our services are built on compassion, dignity, and empowerment. Whether someone is taking their first step towards seeking support or continuing their journey of recovery, RSVP is here to listen, believe, and help.
Funding is essential for us to continue and grow these services. Donations allow us to reach more people, offer specialist support, train staff and volunteers, and ensure that no one has to face abuse or trauma alone. That is why this charity poll means so much to us.
What is the My Favourite Voucher Codes Charity Poll?
My Favourite Voucher Codes (MFVC) is a popular UK platform helping people save money on everyday shopping through discounts and voucher codes. Alongside their savings service, they run a monthly charity poll to give back.
Each month, MFVC and their supporters put forward 4 charities to be nominated for the poll. The public can vote for the charity they would like to support throughout the month, and the charity with the most votes receives 20% of My Favourite Voucher Codes’ profits for that month.
For February 2026, RSVP is honoured to be one of the nominated charities.
Important details about the poll:
● It is completely free to vote.
● You do not need to sign up or enter any personal details.
● You can vote in just a few seconds.
● The poll runs from 1st February to 28th February 2026.
● Every single vote counts.
This means that even the smallest action — one click — can help turn into real financial support for our charity.
How to Vote for RSVP – Step by Step
Voting is quick, easy, and free. Here’s exactly how to do it:
1. Visit the My Favourite Voucher Codes charity poll page.
2. Find RSVP in the list of nominated charities.
3. Click on the vote button next to RSVP.
4. That’s it — your vote is counted instantly.
No email address, no account, no forms — just one simple click to support us.
How This Donation Can Benefit Our Charity
The donation from My Favourite Voucher Codes would go directly towards strengthening our services. It would help us respond to growing demand, maintain high standards of care, and continue building a future where survivors feel heard, supported, and empowered.
Every pound raised through this poll has the potential to change lives — and your vote helps make that possible.
Please Vote and Share
We cannot win this poll without the support of our community. If you believe in our mission, we ask you to:
● Vote for RSVP in the My Favourite Voucher Codes charity poll.
● Share the poll with friends, family, and colleagues.
● Encourage others to take just a few seconds to support us.
One vote may feel small, but together, our voices can create real impact.
From all of us at RSVP, thank you for standing with us, believing in our work, and helping us continue to support those who need it most. Your support truly makes a difference.
Update: We Have Won!
Thank you to the amazing supporters who voted for us on the MFVC Charity polls. Now your hard work has paid off!
We received the lovely news that we have been the winners of the poll, awarding us £169.72! These funds will help strengthen our core services and respond to survivors across the West Midlands.
🎉New Grant Secured: Thanks to the Austin And Hope Pilkington Trust
RSVP would like to express our sincere thanks to the Austin and Hope Pilkington Trust for awarding us a grant of £5,000. This funding will contribute directly to maintaining one month of our specialist support service for refugee and asylum-seeking women who are survivors of sexual violence, abuse, trafficking or exploitation.
The Trust’s investment ensures continuity of counselling, advocacy and safe women-only groups at a crucial time, where refugee and asylum-seekers in the UK are faced with a lack of safety and legal rights. They endure profound hardships and uncertainties, including insecure housing, limited access to healthcare, and prolonged legal processes. For those who are rape survivors, these challenges are compounded by trauma, stigma, and barriers to specialist support, leaving them vulnerable to isolation and retraumatization.
Our teams are still working to secure longer-term funding for our specialist service for refugee and asylum-seeker survivors, but this grant is still a win! We are extremely grateful to the Austin Hope Pilkington Trust for your support and for your commitment to improving the lives of RSVP survivors.
Garfield Weston Foundation Supports RSVP
Birmingham and Solihull sexual abuse charity was awarded £30,000 in February 2025 by the Garfield Weston Foundation towards core costs.
Rape and Sexual Violence Project (RSVP) is delighted to announce that the Garfield Weston Foundation have awarded £30,000 towards the core running costs of the charity. Core costs are vital to charities as the charity can decided where to spend the money, in RSVP’s case the funds will support our wellbeing services.
Lisa Thompson, Chief Executive of RSVP, said: ‘We are now in our 47th year of supporting survivors of rape and sexual violence, we cannot do this essential service without donations and grants from individuals and organisations like the Garfield Weston Foundation. We hope that this is the start of a long-standing relationship with the foundation.”
About Garfield Weston Foundation:
Established in 1958, the Garfield Weston Foundation is a family-founded grant-maker that gives money to support a wide variety of charities across the UK. The Foundation’s funding comes from an endowment of shares in the Weston family business – a successful model that still exists today. The Weston family have a consistent aim. The more successful the family businesses, the more money the Foundation can donate.
Each year the foundation gives away its income and donations have continued to grow. Since it was established it has donated over £1.5 billion, of which over half has been given away in the past ten years. In the most recent financial year the Foundation gave away over £100 million to just under 1,800 charities across the UK.
11/03/2025
Thank you BVH
A huge heartfelt thank you to Bournville Harriers (BVH) running club who had their Christmas party on Friday. Through their raffle they kindly raised £212 for us and another fabulous local charity, St. Mary’s Hospice. £106 will buy 26 public transport tickets so that any child or adult who needs to travel to us for an appointment, but can’t afford to, can be given a day travel ticket. This means they never have to miss out on receiving our support. That is truly fabulous, thank you!
As if this generosity wasn’t enough they also donated some festive party headbands and glasses so we can donate them to some of the children and families we support. This is just a very small selection of them! We hope that these will bring a little bit of festive fun and laughter at what can be a difficult time for many.
Thanks again BVH for your continued kindness and generosity. We really appreciate your efforts from all the different ways you’ve fundraised for us, including every single one of your runners who have run sponsored runs for us, and every member who has donated to these runs too. It means the world to us to have your support. Happy Christmas all.