Parents benefit from new employment rights from 6 April 2025

Employees now have new statutory neonatal care and pay rights giving them additional rights if their baby requires neonatal care. 

Who will be eligible?

This applies to employees who now have a day-one right with no minimum qualifying service requirement. 

However, an employee must:-

• At the date of birth, be the child’s parent, intended parent (under a surrogacy arrangement) or the partner of the child’s mother or intended parent, or be the child’s adopter or prospective adopter (or partner of the same), including where the child is adopted from overseas.
• Have or expect to have responsibility for the upbringing of the child.
• Take the leave to care for the child.

What is neonatal care?

Neonatal care covers medical care in a hospital and also covers medical care in other places if certain conditions are satisfied as well as palliative or end of life care. 

For an employee to be eligible to take this leave, then the neonatal care must start within 28 days of the child’s birth and it must continue without interruption for at least 7 days, not counting the day on which neonatal care starts.

How long is the leave? 

An employee is entitled to take one week of neonatal care leave in respect of each “qualifying period” that a child has spent in neonatal care, provided that all eligibility and notice requirements are met.  It must be taken in blocks of whole numbers of weeks.

The first qualifying period is a period of a week starting on the day after neonatal care starts (in other words, days two to eight of neonatal care, where day one is the day neonatal care starts, which in many cases will be the date of birth). The result is that an employee is not entitled to take neonatal care until day nine. 

There is a maximum of 12 weeks of neonatal care leave which must be taken within 68 weeks of the child’s birth. In adoption cases, leave will be after the date of placement (or in overseas adoption cases, the date the child enters Great Britain).   

The leave is split into 2 tiers which adds complexity to the scheme and there are different notice requirements for each tier. 

Tier 1 is the period from the start of the neonatal care until the seventh day after the day the child stops receiving neonatal care and can be taken in non-consecutive weeks. There can be more than one tier 1 period in the event the child stops receiving neonatal care for a period of more than seven days, then starts to receive neonatal care (provided this takes place within 28 days of birth).  

Tier 2 is more than a week after the child has left neonatal care and is not a tier 1 period but has to be taken as a continuous period of a whole number of weeks.  

Some other points to note

Employees must comply with notice requirements and are protected from being subject from detriment or dismissal relating to taking neonatal care leave.

Employees may also be eligible for statutory neonatal care pay if they satisfy certain conditions.  

See Neonatal Care Pay and Leave: Overview – GOV.UK

The contents of this article is a general guide only at the date of publication. It is not comprehensive, and it does not constitute legal advice. Specific legal advice should be sought in relation to the particular facts of a given situation.