Family Friendly Rights
This page covers your rights on maternity, paternity, shared, adoption and upaid parental leave for parents.
This page covers your rights on maternity, paternity, shared, adoption and upaid parental leave for parents.
The purpose of this advice page is to give an overview of some of the rights that are available to you, however this is no substitute for specific advice which you can obtain from your GMB Trade Union Representative.
If you are treated unfairly as a result of using the rights on this page you should seek advice without delay.
Important time limits apply to Employment Tribunal claims, you normally have just three months less one day in order to bring a claim in the Employment Tribunal so you should always seek advice in good time.keywords: parental leave, maternity leave, shared leave, adoption, unpaid parental leave, parents, guardians
An employee who is expecting a child has the right to take maternity leave, providing that certain notice requirements are satisfied. Maternity leave consists of compulsory, ordinary and additional maternity leave.
All employees are entitled to both ordinary and additional maternity leave, totalling 52 weeks, providing they satisfy certain notice requirements. An employer is also entitled to ask for proof that the employee is pregnant. Usually, this would be provided to the employer by way of a MATB1 form.
Notice
An employee has to provide notice to the employer at least 15 weeks before the week the baby is due to be born. The notice must state the following:
Within 28 days of receiving the notice, the employer must write back, informing the employee of her expected date of return from additional maternity leave.
If the employee changes her mind regarding the date she wants her leave to start, she must provide at least 28 days’ notice. If it is not reasonably practicable to provide the required 28 days’ notice, then the employee should give notice when it is reasonably practicable to do so.
Statutory maternity leave can be brought to an end early either by:
Giving 8 weeks’ notice of the intention to return early or;
Giving 8 weeks’ notice to the employer that the leave is to end on a specified future date
Illness during Pregnancy
If the pregnant employee is absent from work in the last 4 weeks before the baby is due to be born, for a reason related to pregnancy or childbirth, then she has to inform her employer that the absence is pregnancy related. If the employee goes off sick in this period, her maternity leave will start automatically start from the day after the first day of absence.
Statutory Maternity Pay- Eligibility
Shared Parental Leave (SPL) allows for the mother and a second person (father/married to/civil partner or the ‘partner’ of the mother) to share up to 50 of the 52 week leave to which the mother is entitled as maternity leave.
You can also share up to 37 weeks of pay between you and your partner. The right to take shared parental leave is only triggered once the mother gives notice to cut short their maternity leave.
If both parties are to take up SPL, both partners must fulfil the relevant qualification criteria set out in the regulations. The criteria for the mother are:
A mother may share her leave with the child’s father, her spouse, civil partner or her “partner” which is defined as someone of either sex who lives with the mother and child “in an enduring family relationship” but is not the mother’s child, parent, grandchild, grandparent, sibling, aunt, uncle, niece or nephew.
To be eligible the partner must:
For guidance on the notice provisions and templates that you can use please refer to the following website: www.acas.org.uk/spl
Shared Parental Leave Pay is paid at the rate of £145.18 a week or 90% of your average weekly earnings, whichever is lower. This is the same as Statutory Maternity Pay (SMP) except that during the first 6 weeks SMP is paid at 90% of whatever you earn (with no maximum).
Statutory Adoption Leave is 52 weeks. It’s made up of the following:
In order to be entitled to adoption leave and pay you must have a child matched and placed for adoption through an adoption agency. When you and your partner (including same sex partners and civil partners) adopt a child you can decide which one will take adoption leave and which one will take paternity leave (subject to meeting the relevant qualifying requirements).
Only one person in a couple can take adoption leave. The other partner could get paternity leave instead. If you get adoption leave, you can also get paid time off work to attend 5 adoption appointments after you’ve been matched with a child. Your partner can also get unpaid time off to attend up to two appointments.
Am I entitled to adoption leave?
To qualify for adoption leave, you must:
You must give the correct notice to take adoption leave, see below.
If you are not an employee you will not be entitled to adoption leave but you may still be entitled to Statutory Adoption Pay (SAP). For example, freelancers, agency workers, zero hours contracts and casual workers may still qualify for SAP.
Start date for adoption leave
Adoption leave can start:
You must tell your employer within 28 days if the date of placement (or UK arrival date for overseas adoptions) changes. You must give your employer at least 8 weeks’ notice if you want to change your return to work date.
Statutory adoption leave can be brought to an end early either by:
Statutory Adoption Pay is paid for up to 39 weeks. The weekly amount is
It’s paid in the same way as your wages (for example monthly or weekly). Tax and National Insurance will be deducted.
For further guidance on this topic please refer to www.acas.org.uk/adoption
Parental Leave is time off that employees who are parents can take to spend time with their child up until the child’s 18th birthday. It is usually unpaid. This is a separate right from Shared Parental Leave and should not be confused with it.
Parental leave can be taken to look after their child’s welfare such as spending more time with their child, looking at new schools, spending more time with family, such as visiting grandparents and the employee’s terms and conditions of employment will remain the same during this leave.
Employees are entitled to 18 weeks’ leave for each child and adopted child, up to their 18th birthday. This is limited to 4 weeks per year for each child. The leave must be taken in whole weeks unless agreed otherwise or if the child is disabled.
To be eligible employees must:
Employers can ask for proof (like a birth certificate) as long as it’s reasonable to do so. It would arguably not be reasonable to do this every time (an employer should keep a record). For further guidance please see: www.acas.org.uk/parentalleave
Employees have a right to take time off work for dependants, however there is no statutory right to be paid during such time off. The legislation is specific and provides that an employee is entitled to take reasonable time off where it is necessary in the following circumstances:
Only in the situations listed above does an employee have the statutory right to reasonable time off. For a definition of a ‘dependent’ for these purposes see below.
You should tell your employer as soon as you need to leave to attend an emergency of this kind. Where an employer has unreasonably refused to permit an employee to take time off as required by the right, you have the right to bring a claim in the Employment Tribunal.
Claims must be brought within three months beginning with the date when the refusal occurred. The time off must be reasonable, however the statutory provisions provide no indication of how much time off is reasonable.
Your employer may pay you for time off to look after dependants but they don’t have to. Check your contract, staff handbook or intranet site to see if there are rules about this.
The definition of a dependant
A dependant is defined as a:
In addition, those that reasonably rely on the employee to provide assistance if they fall ill or to arrange for the provision of care, for example, an elderly neighbour, may also be a dependant for the purposes of the legislation.
If you are unsure about any aspect of employment law then you can refer to our other UnionLine employement rights pages - in particular the one on the issue of Limitation in Employment cases. You may also want to seek specific advice from your GMB Region in the first instance.
The purpose of this advice page is to give an overview of some of the rights that are available to you, however this is no substitute for specific advice which you can obtain from your GMB Trade Union Representative.