A customer is abusing my staff. What am I actually required to do?

12th September 2026

Most owners treat this as a customer problem. That is the mistake, and it is the reason it drags on for months. When a regular shouts at whoever is on reception, follows a driver out to the van, or makes remarks to a young member of staff that nobody wants to repeat back to you, the law is not asking how good you are at handling customers. It is asking whether you are running a safe workplace. That changes who is exposed, because the customer is not the one who ends up explaining themselves to a tribunal or an inspector.

Start with health and safety, not with the customer

Section 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 requires you to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health, safety and welfare at work of your employees. The Health and Safety Executive puts abuse from the public squarely inside that duty. It defines the problem as “any incident in which a person is abused, threatened or assaulted in circumstances relating to their work”, and says that serious or persistent verbal abuse or threats can have a serious effect on a worker’s mental health. Nobody has to be touched for this to count.

Regulation 3 of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 then requires a suitable and sufficient assessment of the risks to your employees, and if you employ five or more people you must record the significant findings. If a customer has already abused someone, you now know the risk exists. An assessment written after the event and acted on is worth a great deal more than one you never did, and HSE is blunt that the assessment on its own achieves nothing: it is the actions you take following on from it that are the point.

One part of this has been law since 2024

If the behaviour is sexual, you are already under a specific duty. Section 40A of the Equality Act 2010, in force since 26th October 2024, requires every employer to take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment of its employees, and Acas confirms this already covers harassment by third parties such as customers and clients. It is enforceable by the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and where an employee wins a sexual harassment claim a tribunal can add up to 25 per cent to the compensation if you breached that duty, under section 124A.

What your employee cannot do today is bring a claim purely because a customer harassed them. The subsections of section 40 that made employers liable for third party harassment were removed on 1st October 2013 by the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013, and as the law stands section 40 only stops you harassing your own staff.

That gap closes on 30th October 2026

From 30th October 2026 section 21 of the Employment Rights Act 2025 puts new subsections into section 40 so that an employer “must not permit a third party to harass” an employee, and an employer permits it where it failed to take all reasonable steps to prevent the third party from doing so. The same date raises the existing preventative duty from reasonable steps to all reasonable steps, and Acas gives the same date for both. The Act also creates a power to make regulations setting out what counts as a reasonable step, and that guidance had still not been published when this was written. Business.gov.uk says clear guidance will come before the change and points employers to the existing EHRC material in the meantime.

Two things to keep straight. Harassment in this sense has two limbs and section 26 requires both. The conduct has to be unwanted conduct related to age, disability, gender reassignment, race, religion or belief, sex or sexual orientation, or conduct of a sexual nature. It also has to have the purpose or effect of violating the person’s dignity, or of creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for them. A customer who is simply rude to everybody clears the second limb and fails the first, so is not harassing anyone in the legal sense. They are still a health and safety risk, and the 1974 Act does not care whether they are even handed about it.

Yes, you can bar a customer

Owners hesitate here far more than they need to. Nothing obliges you to keep serving somebody. Section 29 of the Equality Act 2010 limits the reason, not the right: as a service provider you must not refuse a service, offer it on worse terms or stop providing it because of a protected characteristic. Refusing because of how someone behaved is a different question entirely.

So keep the reason about conduct and keep it specific. Write down what was said or done, on what date, to whom. Do not write down what you think the person is like. A letter that says “on 3rd September you swore at a member of our staff and refused to leave when asked” is defensible. One that says “you have become impossible” is not.

What to do this week

Take the report properly. Sit down with the member of staff, get the incidents in writing with dates, and ask what would make them comfortable, without promising an outcome before you have decided one.

Then pick your response and say it out loud rather than hoping the situation settles. In practice there are four: a quiet word, a written warning that further behaviour of that kind ends the relationship, a restriction, or a bar. Restrictions are underused and often the right answer, so consider contact by email only, appointments with two people present, no lone visits, or service at a counter rather than at a desk.

Whatever you choose, tell the customer in writing, tell your team what has been decided, and change the arrangement that made it possible. A panic alarm, a second person rostered on, or a rule that nobody attends that address alone will do more than any letter.

What you owe the person on the receiving end

Do not discipline anyone for walking away. Under section 44(1A) of the Employment Rights Act 1996 a worker has the right not to be subjected to any detriment for leaving, refusing to return, or taking appropriate steps to protect themselves where they reasonably believed the danger was serious and imminent. Sending someone back out to that customer because the account matters is the kind of decision that looks very bad in writing later. If the pressure has already tipped somebody into a long absence, what to do when an employee has been off sick for three months picks the situation up from there.

Record every incident, including the ones that come to nothing. HSE notes that staff often stop reporting because they think it is just part of the job or that nothing will be done, so make it quick to do and visibly act on it. Some incidents you must report rather than simply file. RIDDOR expressly covers acts of violence against people at work, and a death, a specified injury, or an injury that leaves a worker incapacitated for more than seven consecutive days is reportable.

Keep the file longer than instinct suggests. From 1st October 2026 the time limit for bringing most employment tribunal claims rises from three months to six, so a note you would once have thrown away after a few months may need to answer a question raised most of a year later. Dated notes made at the time are the whole defence. Nothing written afterwards ever reads as well.

Tarn.hr provides HR guidance based on UK employment law and Acas codes of practice. It does not constitute legal advice and should not be relied upon as such. Employment law is complex and turns on the facts of each case. For any situation involving significant legal risk, potential tribunal claims, or matters of particular sensitivity, you should seek advice from a qualified employment solicitor. Tarn.hr is not responsible for any decisions made on the basis of its guidance.