Ministers under pressure over UK non-compete clauses
Sifted reports that the government is being pushed to change the rules on non-compete clauses. For founders, that touches both hiring from rivals and the contracts their own staff have signed.
The UK government is under pressure to change the rules governing non-compete clauses, according to reporting by Sifted.
Who is applying that pressure, and what change they want, is not set out in the report.
Non-compete clauses are the contractual terms that stop a departing employee joining a competitor, or starting one, for a period after they leave. They sit in a large share of startup employment contracts.
The rules as they stand have not changed. Any founder hiring today is hiring under them.
That matters in two directions at once. A founder recruiting from a rival is constrained by the clause that rival wrote; the same founder relies on their own clauses to keep engineers and salespeople from walking to the competition.
A ban would remove both at the same time. A limit would shorten both. Neither outcome favours one side of a hiring market cleanly, which is part of why the argument runs.
No timetable for a decision has been published, and no proposal has been set out publicly for founders to plan against.
The practical reading is narrow. Contracts signed now are written against rules that are being argued over, so a clause drafted to the current maximum may not be the clause a court is willing to enforce later.
Founders who treat their non-competes as the main thing keeping a team in place are relying on a term whose future is in other people's hands.