On 6 April 2025, the right to Statutory Neonatal Care Leave (SNCL) and Statutory Neonatal Care Pay (SNCP) will come into force. Accompanying regulations were introduced on 20 January 2025, which are still subject to Parliamentary approval, but provide additional detail about the Act and how it will work in practice. The Act will provide for SNCL and SNCP for employees with a parental relationship to a child receiving neonatal care and aims to help parents to spend time with their baby whilst they are in hospital, without this counting as part of their maternity, paternity or shared parental leave entitlements.
Who will be eligible?
Parents of babies who are admitted into neonatal care and are up to 28 days old and have had a continuous stay in hospital of 7 full days or longer will be eligible to take up to 12 weeks’ of SNCL. There is no minimum qualifying service requirement and so all employees will be entitled to up to 12 weeks’ SNCL if they meet the relevant requirements in the Neonatal Care Leave Regulations. Employees are able to take this leave when their child is in neonatal care or at another time before the end of 68 weeks beginning with the date of the child’s birth.
In contrast to SNCL, employees will only be eligible for SNCP, which will be a maximum of 12 weeks’ pay, if they have 26 weeks’ continuous service and they are earning more than the lower earnings limit, which is currently £123 per week. It is likely that SNCP will be paid at the same rate as statutory maternity/paternity pay.
Important considerations
In terms of how this act will interact with other forms of parental leave, such as maternity leave, employees will always take SNCL at the end of their other parental leave entitlements, i.e. they can add a period of SNCL onto the end of that leave, extending the amount of paid time off. It may therefore be the case that employees may choose to curtail their maternity leave once statutory maternity pay ends and then move to SNCP for the next 12 weeks, which would result in nearly a whole year of paid leave.
It is also worth noting that employees taking SNCL will be entitled to the same protections as other employees taking statutory family-related leave, including:
- Protection from redundancy: the employee will be entitled to be offered a suitable alternative vacancy with the employer, the employer’s successor or an associated employer.
- Protection from detriment: an employee who has taken or made use of SNCL should not be subjected to any detriment by any act, or deliberate failure to act.
- Automatic unfair dismissal: an employee who is dismissed because of a reason connected with the fact that the employee took, sought to take or make use of SNCL, will be able to claim they have been automatically unfairly dismissed.
If you require assistance in relation to the new act or help updating any of your policies, please contact a member of our team employment@wslaw.co.uk