No action is required by law.
However, if you have no existing agreement for information and consultation, and 10% or more of your employees (see question nine) put in a formal request for an information and consultation ('I&C') agreement, you will have to take steps to introduce such an agreement.
That 10% can be aggregated over a rolling six month period, so even if there are fewer than 10% at the first request, you may find yourself required to take steps in the end.
You might want to consider making a pre-emptive move, and initiating negotiations yourself if you think that might happen (see question 12).
If you already have an effective information and consultation process which meets the requirements of the new rules (see question six), your employees may be happy to continue using that process, in which case you need do nothing. However, if 10% or more of your employees request negotiations for new arrangements, you must then either enter negotiations, or hold a ballot of your workforce to find out whether there is enough support for change from other employees (see question six). If such support exists, you will have to negotiate a new I&C agreement. If you think that may happen, there can be advantages in pre-empting the situation by initiating negotiations yourself (see question seven).
Always take advice if you are required, or intend, to establish (or amend) an I&C agreement. You do not want to end up with something which employees can and will challenge because it flouts the spirit or even the letter of the law, on the one hand, or something which ties you up in knots on the other.
