Three bills introducing additional paid leave for parents whose babies require neonatal care, the expansion of redundancy protections, and carer’s leave received Royal Assent on 24 May 2023. While the carer’s leave and the expanded redundancy protection provisions entered into effect on 6 April 2024, the neonatal leave is expected to come into force in April 2025.
Key Details
Details of the provisions of the legislation are as follows.
Neonatal Leave
Parents of babies who require post-birth neonatal care of at least seven days following birth will be entitled to Neonatal Care Leave and Neonatal Care Pay. This leave will be a separate entitlement and parents will retain full entitlement to other statutory leaves such as maternity and paternity leave. Employees will therefore be able to add Neonatal Care Leave to the end of other forms of statutory parental leave to which they may be entitled.
Under the new legislation, employees will be entitled to take between one and 12 weeks of paid Neonatal Care Leave while their child is receiving neonatal care or after that period but within a prescribed period of not less than 68 weeks. Employees with at least 26 weeks’ continuous service and earnings above the lower-earnings limit will be eligible for Statutory Neonatal Care Pay. Parents taking leave will be protected from dismissal or detrimental treatment as a result of having taken Neonatal Care Leave.
Carer’s Leave
Employees are eligible, upon hire, for up to one week’s unpaid leave every 12-month period to arrange for or provide care for a dependent (spouse or civil partner, parent or child of the employee, someone who lives in the household or relies upon the employee for care). Eligible dependents must:
· require long-term care, considered currently to last longer than three months because of a mental or physical illness or injury,
· require care because of old age, or
· have a disability under the Equality Act of 2010.
Employees are entitled to take their carer’s leave from their first day of employment. This leave may be taken as a whole or in increments of individual days or half days throughout a 12-month period. The time off may be used for more than one dependent and the exact number of days will differ from an employee to another depending on the length of their regular workweek. For instance, employees who usually work only three days per week will be entitled to up to three days of carer’s leave per year.
Employees are required to give sufficient notice to their employer prior to taking this leave. A notice period of three days is required when the leave request is for one day or half a day. For
leave requests longer than one day, the notice period must be twice as long as the number of days requested.
The carer’s leave requests do not need to be in writing and employees are not required to provide evidence that their dependent needs care. In the event of an emergency, employees are not obligated to give a notice period prior to taking their leave.
While carer’s leave requests cannot be refused, employers may ask their employees to delay their leave when their absence would cause serious disruption to the business operation. If they choose to delay their employee’s leave, employers must:
– state the reasons of such delay in writing within seven days of the original employee’s request, and
– agree on another start date of the employee’s leave that must be within one month of the original start date requested.
Employees taking carer’s leave will be protected from dismissal or detrimental treatment as a result of having taken this leave.
Redundancy Protection
Redundancy protection, including the right to be offered any appropriate and open position on a priority basis before being made redundant, is currently available to employees on shared-parent, maternity, or adoption leave. The new legislation extends these protections to employees recently returned from maternity, adoption, or shared-parental leave, and to pregnant employees. Redundancy protection may extend for up to 18 months. The legislation also extends redundancy protection to women who did not yet notify their employer of their pregnancy but suffer a miscarriage. In this case, protection will likely be provided with a shorter duration.
Next steps
Employers should watch for the implementation of the regulations setting forth the final parameters of the neonatal leave, likely in early 2025. Employers planning to review or implement policies will want to minimally match the above provisions while noting that they remain subject to change and any policy implemented may need to be amended once regulations are issued.
Employers should determine whether they will enhance the statutory payments, especially to align with enhancement they may provide for other types of parental leave. Some employers have publicly announced such enhancements.