Neonatal Care Leave & Pay
The right will be introduced from 6th April 2025
This week the Department for Business and Trade confirmed that a new statutory right to Neonatal Care leave and Neonatal Care pay will be available subject to parliamentary approval from 6th April 2025.
Following the passing of the Neonatal Care (Leave and Pay) Act in 2023, the new right aims to support working families with babies in neonatal care.
Whilst we will need to wait for the regulations to be published to provide all key detail here is what we know so far:
Neonatal Care Leave
What is the entitlement?
- The entitlement will be from one week minimum up to a maximum of 12 weeks depending of the length of the neonatal care required.
- It is expected that leave must be taken within 68 weeks of the child’s date of birth but this will be confirmed in the regulations. This means that employees will be able to take the leave either when their child is receiving neonatal care or after that period. They will be able to add this leave to the end of other statutory family leave like maternity or paternity leave. This is because maternity leave and other statutory family leave would be lost if stopped to take Neonatal care leave.
Who is eligible?
- The Neonatal Care leave is available to staff from day one.
- To be eligible for the leave the individual must have a parental or ‘other personal relationship’ (to be defined in due course by the regulations) with the baby who is receiving or has received neonatal care.
- Applies to parents of babies who are admitted to Neonatal care (of a medical or palliative kind). That care must:
- - start before the baby is 28 days old; and
- - must continue uninterrupted for a period of at least 7 days from the day after the care started.
- What is the entitlement?*
- Up to 12 weeks pay, paid at the current statutory rate.
Who is eligible?
- To be eligible for Neonatal Care pay an employee must have at least 26 weeks service with the same minimum earnings as Statutory Maternity pay.
- The employee must also meet the same criteria as set out for Neonatal Care Leave above.
Additional points:
- Employees will have the same protection against unfair dismissal and redundancy as other family friendly statutory leave.
The regulations will provide more clarity on some areas of this new statutory provision. In the same way as other statutory leave rights, employers can’t opt out of providing this to employees but can offer more generous entitlements if they wish to do so.
This will be a welcome support to families going through very difficult and worrying times with their babies.
Please contact Tamar HR if you have any questions or would like to discuss preparing a policy to set out the new entitlements to your teams.