Parental bereavement leave policy

Our policy covers entitlement to parental bereavement leave, notice requirements, the options for taking leave and the employee’s rights on return to work, as well as the position on pay.

The basic right

The right to parental bereavement leave (PBL) enables eligible employees to take one or two weeks off work where they lose a child under the age of 18, or suffer a stillbirth from 24 weeks of pregnancy, on or after 6 April 2020. Statutory parental bereavement pay (SPBP) may also be payable during PBL.

Who’s eligible?

An employee is entitled to PBL if they are:

• the child’s parent, including adoptive parents, prospective adopters, intended parents under a surrogacy arrangement or a parent “in fact”, i.e. someone who lived with the child in their own home and had day-to-day responsibility for their care for at least the last four weeks ending with the date of death; or
• the parent’s partner.

It doesn’t include paid carers. A partner is someone (whether of the same or different sex) who lives with the child and the parent in an enduring family relationship but isn’t the parent’s parent, grandparent, sister, brother, aunt or uncle. There’s no minimum length of service requirement for PBL. Where more than one child dies, the employee is entitled to PBL in respect of each child.

Amount of leave

PBL can be one week, two consecutive weeks or two separate weeks. It can start on any day of the week and can be taken at any time within the period of 56 weeks beginning with the date of the child’s death.

Pay

Employees who have at least 26 weeks’ continuous service and average weekly earnings of not less than the lower earnings limit also qualify for SPBP at the prevailing statutory rate.