On 9th October the Prime Minister promised to curb non-compete clauses. He didn't say by how much, or when, or for whom.

The announcement came at the Innovation Nation Summit in Manchester, and the gist was that legislation is coming because some businesses have taken restrictive contract terms too far. And that was about the size of it. Law firm Gibson Dunn described the announcement as light on detail, and an outright ban has not been promised.

My first reaction, I'll admit, was a shrug.

But the detail matters to anyone trying to hire a senior salesperson, and not in the way the headlines imply. City AM's coverage of the plan makes the point well enough. Employers don't give up protection just because one tool gets blunter. They reach for another, and the replacement is often the one that costs you the most time.

What has the government actually promised on non-competes?

Less than you might think. The commitment is to legislate on non-competes and to look at wider restrictive practices, starting with notice periods. Gibson Dunn lists a statutory cap on duration, a salary threshold, paid restrictions and a sector-by-sector approach as possibilities, and none of them has been confirmed.

But any of it needs primary legislation, and nobody has put a date on a bill.

The Budget on 28th October may bring more detail, according to Gibson Dunn. And the last time a government got this far, in 2023, it settled on a three-month cap on non-competes, as Lewis Silkin records. Then the election arrived and the idea went with it.

Would curbing non-competes make a senior sales hire any easier?

Probably not by much. A non-compete limits who someone can work for after they leave, while the thing most hiring managers feel is the wait before the new person starts. One partner at Addleshaw Goddard told City AM that employers are likely to shift towards gardening leave instead, which has largely the same effect.

Gardening leave, for the uninitiated, involves a lot less gardening than the name suggests, since the person stays on the payroll and stays away from the building, the clients and the team.

Can a candidate with a non-compete still join you?

Often, yes, though it depends on the wording and on how far it reaches. Under the law as it stands a non-compete is a restraint of trade and only holds if it goes no further than reasonably necessary to protect a genuine business interest. Gibson Dunn points out that courts already look at these closely, which makes some of them hard to enforce.

Ignoring one is a mistake. A sales director moving between direct competitors, with a long restriction covering the same customers, is exactly the case where lawyers get involved. Read the paperwork early. Or better, ask for it before the final interview and not after the offer letter has gone out.

Why do sales hires feel this more than most?

Because what a sales leader walks out with is relationships, meaning customers, pipeline and how the team really sells, which is why the contracts around senior commercial people tend to be the tightest in the building.

A sales director notice period of three or six months is not unusual in our experience, and some run longer. I've lost count of the shortlists that went quiet around week five because the preferred candidate was still serving out the clock and the business had stopped believing in the hire. And all the while the vacancy keeps costing money, and the quarter's targets don't care.

It gets worse, because the person you want is usually the person their current employer most wants to keep.

Counter-offers arrive in that gap. Weeks of notice give a worried managing director plenty of time to find a pay rise nobody mentioned in the spring.

What happens if notice periods get capped next?

There is no statutory maximum notice period in UK law today. The length is whatever the contract says, and that leaves plenty of room for the long ones. Gibson Dunn expects the options to include a flat limit, six months for example, or one tiered by role.

A cap would help when you are the hirer, because the wait for a new starter gets shorter.

But it works in both directions. Your own sales director could leave on much less notice than they can today, and a handover that used to take half a year might have to happen in twelve weeks. Lewis Silkin's research found that employers broadly oppose an outright ban, and I can see why. Plenty of them would be giving up their only real protection.

City AM also notes that more stages of the Employment Rights Act arrive next January. Employers are already adjusting to one big change in how they hire and dismiss, and this would be a second.

What should you do before the law is written?

Plan around the rule on the page and not the one that doesn't exist yet.

Ask every senior sales candidate about their notice and any restrictions in the first conversation. Set the start date from the contract, not from hope. If the wait is long, work out who covers the territory, or whether an interim can bridge it, before you have a gap rather than after.

Look at your own contracts too. Lewis Silkin suggests reviewing garden leave and notice terms, and tightening non-solicitation and non-dealing clauses where they are weak, ahead of whatever the government settles on. Either way it's a job for an employment solicitor and not for a recruiter.

Some businesses answer a long external wait by looking inside instead, and we looked at when promoting from inside works for sales leadership only last week.

The promised limit still hasn't arrived. Nobody can say yet whether it will be tight or toothless. Until it does, the notice period written in the contract is the only number that counts.

If your next senior sales hire is stuck serving one, our sales recruitment team will tell you straight what the timing really looks like.