On 6 April 2025, the right to Statutory Neonatal Care Leave (SNCL) and Statutory Neonatal Care Pay (SNCP) came into force through the Neonatal Care (Leave & Pay) Act 2023. The accompanying regulations, made under this Act, explain how these rights will work in practice. The Act provides SNCL and SNCP for employees with a parental relationship to a child receiving neonatal care, giving parents more time to spend with their baby whilst they are in hospital, but without this counting as part of their maternity, paternity or shared parental leave entitlements.
Who is eligible for neonatal care leave?
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 are now eligible to take up to 12 weeks’ of SNCL. There is no minimum qualifying service requirement, meaning all employees are now entitled to up to 12 weeks’ SNCL if they meet the relevant requirements in the Neonatal Care Leave Regulations i.e. it is a “day 1” employment right. 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 are only eligible for SNCP, which will be the maximum of 12 weeks’ pay, if they have 26 weeks’ continuous service with their employer and they are earning more than the lower earnings limit, which is currently £125 per week. SNCP is paid at a rate of £187.18 per week or 90% of the employee’s average weekly earnings, whichever is lower – matching the rate paid for statutory maternity/paternity pay.
Important considerations
In terms of how these new rights will interact with other existing forms of parental leave, such as maternity leave, employees can 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 time off. In practice it may be the case that employees choose to curtail their maternity leave once statutory maternity pay ends at 39 weeks and then move onto SNCL for the next 12 weeks, so they benefit from a year of continuous paid leave. This would mean a shorter period of statutory leave than if they took the full year of maternity leave and then took their SNCL but would mean they do not have an unpaid period of leave (weeks 40-52 of maternity leave).
It is also worth noting that employees taking SNCL are now entitled to the same protections as other employees taking statutory family-related leave, including:
- Protection from redundancy: the employee is entitled to be offered a suitable alternative vacancy with the 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