The action plan requirements, in the order the service asks for them
Menopause action plans are not published somewhere new. They go on the gender pay gap service, alongside your pay gap figures, and the two are assessed as one submission.
That catches employers out, because the requirements are the gender pay gap service’s requirements: a minimum number of actions, specific supporting text with word limits, and a named responsible person. This page sets them out in the order the service asks for them.
The dates
| Date | What happens |
|---|---|
| 6 April 2026 | Publishing an action plan becomes voluntary. The framework exists; there is no obligation. |
| 30 March 2027 | First expected mandatory publication deadline for public authorities. |
| 4 April 2027 | First expected mandatory publication deadline for private and voluntary sector employers. |
Mandatory publication from spring 2027 applies to employers with 250 or more employees, subject to legislation. One plan is required per legal entity that meets the threshold, which is the requirement most often missed inside a group structure.
Source: Creating an action plan: guidance for employers, GOV.UK, updated 13 May 2026
The 18 recommended actions, in five categories
The guidance publishes a list of 18 recommended actions grouped into five categories. Twelve address the gender pay gap and six support employees experiencing menopause.
- Recruiting staff
- Developing and promoting staff
- Building diversity into your organisation
- Increasing transparency
- Supporting employees experiencing menopause
You are not restricted to the list, but only actions from it count towards the statutory minimum. Anything you write yourself is an extra, and should be presented as one.
The minimum the service will accept
| Requirement | Detail |
|---|---|
| At least two actions | From the recommended list. Fewer and the submission is incomplete. |
| At least one gender pay gap action | From the four gender pay gap categories. |
| At least one menopause action | From the menopause category. |
| At least two marked new or in progress | A plan made only of actions already embedded does not meet this, and it is the requirement most often missed. |
| Supporting text per action | Why it was chosen and how it will be tracked for new actions; how it became established and its results for embedded ones. 100 words each. |
| Overall supporting narrative | 200 words. This is where the evidence goes. |
| A responsible person | A director, partner or senior officer who confirms the plan is accurate. Most public authorities do not need one. |
| A link to your own page | The service takes a link, not a file. You host the plan yourself. |
The 200 words that decide how the plan reads
The supporting narrative is the only place in the submission where you say why these actions and not others. It is also the only part a reader can tell apart from every other employer’s plan, because the actions themselves come from a shared list.
The first focus area of the guidance is to understand the issues in your own organisation, engaging employees and using workforce data, before selecting actions. A narrative that reports what your own workforce said, with numbers, does that job in a paragraph. One that describes a commitment to supporting colleagues does not.
- Say how you found out, and how many people answered.
- Give the two or three findings that chose the actions, as counts rather than adjectives.
- Say what you will measure and when you will look again.
- Do not name individuals, small teams or anything that could identify a person.
What gets a plan sent back
- Two actions, both embedded. The new-or-in-progress requirement is separate from the two-action minimum.
- Supporting text over the word limit. Count it before you paste, not after.
- A URL pasted into a text field rather than the link field.
- No responsible person named, in a private or voluntary sector submission.
- One plan submitted for a group, where several entities each pass the threshold.
- Drafting prompts left in square brackets in published text.
None of these are judgement calls. They are checks, and a plan can be checked against every one of them before anybody opens the service. That is what the composer here does, so nothing is discovered at submission.