Rejected petition Make It Illegal for Employers to Ghost Job Applicants During the UK Jobs Crisis.

Introduce legislation requiring employers to acknowledge job applications, provide a decision within a set timeframe, and give basic feedback after interviews. It should not be legal for employers to advertise vacancies, collect applicant data, and then ignore candidates.

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UK unemployment is at its highest level in nearly five years, and youth unemployment is around 16%, the highest outside the pandemic in over a decade. Yet many applicants are routinely ghosted after applying or interviewing. People are told to “get into work” while employers face no obligation to respond. This wastes time, increases stress, and undermines trust in the labour market. If the Government is serious about tackling unemployment, it must also enforce basic accountability in recruitment

This petition was rejected

Why was this petition rejected?

There’s already a petition about this issue. We cannot accept a new petition when we already have one about a very similar issue.

You are more likely to get action on this issue if you sign and share a single petition.

You may wish to sign the following petition, which calls for similar action:

Require employers to send responses to all job applications
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/742375

We only reject petitions that don’t meet the petition standards.

Date submitted 18 February 2026
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