By Natasha Smith, Employment Solicitor at Parfitt Cresswell Solicitors
New Years resolutions are not just for your personal life. As you set ambitious goals for your business, don’t forget the foundations on which everything else depends, your legal housekeeping.
The most common (and costly) problems we see are not caused by bad intentions or ‘brave’ growth plans, but by small legal oversights that cause major headaches, always at the worst possible time. The start of the year is the perfect moment to pause, review, and ensure your business is not destroyed in 2026 by an oversight. There are seven areas to consider.
- Contracts
Many small businesses grow on trust, relationships and informal agreements. A deal agreed on the phone. A long-standing supplier who “always delivers”. A customer whose scope has crept far beyond the original quote.
As your first resolution, take stock of your key contracts:
- Do you have written terms with customers? Are they still fit for purpose?
- Are your supplier agreements up to date?
- Have you documented any variations that crept in during the year?
Vague or outdated contracts are one of the biggest sources of disputes. What feels obvious to you may look very different in black and white to a judge.
Action: Audit your contracts and make sure the paperwork matches reality.
- IP
Your brand, designs, software, website, and even your business name all carry legal value. Yet many owners assume protection is automatic, it isn’t.
If you’ve launched a new brand, product or service in the last year, ask:
- Is your trading name protected?
- Do you own the copyright to your marketing materials?
- Have you clearly agreed IP ownership with freelancers or developers?
Failing to protect IP early can make it expensive, or impossible, to defend later.
It is just as important to make sure you’re not breaching anyone else’s copyright. Licensing bodies are ruthless, and fines start around £12k for sharing a print article on LinkedIn. Photograph agencies will also charge you thousands of pounds for using an image you found on Google, even if you take the image down.
Action: Identify your core brand and creative assets and confirm what you actually own.
Ensure your employees understand the rules around IP. Include it in staff contracts and send out regular reminders. Check your company’s social media hasn’t shared any protected images.
- HR
Employment law doesn’t wait until you “feel big enough” to deal with it. Whether you have one employee or twenty, your key legal responsibilities are (largely) the same.
Common oversights include:
- No written statement of terms
- Outdated or copied contracts and policies
- No disciplinary or grievance procedures
- Unclear holiday and sickness rules
- Failing to follow a fair and objective redundancy process
- Inadequate performance management procedures or mismanagement of probation periods
These gaps often only surface when something goes wrong, by which point the risk and costs can be enormous. With the expected introduction of key aspects of the Employment Rights Bill from April 2026 onwards, employee rights will be significantly increasing and in return, the obligations on employers will be increased to reflect this.
Action: Make sure every worker’s status, rights and obligations are clearly documented and ensure managers are trained sufficiently to follow your policies and procedures and ACAS guidance.
- Data Protection
If you collect names, emails, payments, marketing preferences or any personal data, you are a data controller. That means GDPR compliance is not a “nice-to-have”, it is a legal requirement.
At the start of 2026, ask:
- Is your privacy policy current?
- Are you storing data securely?
- Do staff know how to handle personal data properly?
- Do you collect information for marketing or payment purposes that you don’t strictly need?
With enforcement increasing and public awareness growing, data mistakes now carry reputational damage as well as financial penalties.
Action: Review how data flows through your business, from website to inbox to storage.
- Disputes
No business sets out expecting conflict, but disputes are a fact of commercial life. Late payments, contract fallouts, employee disagreements, what matters is how prepared you are.
Too often, businesses only seek advice once a situation has escalated. Early guidance is almost always faster and cheaper than firefighting in the heat of the moment.
Action: Know in advance who you would call if a dispute arose, have named responsibility lines for each of the areas mentioned above, and ensure you can act quickly.
- Business Structure
The structure you started with may no longer be the right one. Sole traders grow into limited companies. Partnerships change. Shareholders come and go.
If your business evolved in 2025, consider:
- Is your structure still tax-efficient?
- Are responsibilities clearly defined?
- Do shareholders’ or partnership agreements still reflect reality?
Growth without structure is one of the most common causes of internal business conflict.
Action: Treat your structure as a living framework, not a one-off decision.
- Business Continuity
Finally, New Year is a good time to consider business continuity. What happens if a director becomes ill or dies? A key supplier collapses? A partner wants to exit suddenly?
These are uncomfortable questions but avoiding them doesn’t make the risks disappear.
Action: Start documenting contingency plans instead of relying on assumptions.
Your New Year’s Resolution
The businesses that survive and thrive are not those that avoid risk entirely, but those that manage it effectively. Wishing you a happy and successful 2026!
Parfitt Creswell has offices in London across the South-east and also trades as Charles Coleman & Co., Colemans, Copley Clark, Jevons, Riley and Pope, Keene Marsland, and Max Barford & Co.