My previous Practice Index blog explored upcoming changes to flexible working legislation coming into effect on 6th April 2024. But there are other employment law changes coming soon which practices in England, Scotland and Wales should be aware of. Here’s a quick rundown of them.

Introduction of statutory carer’s leave

To start with, I should say that this right to unpaid time off is separate to existing entitlements and rights, such as parental leave, shared parental leave or emergency time off for dependants.

This new right to carer’s leave is for employees who have one or more dependants with a long-term care need. If you need to know it, the definition of ‘long-term care need’ is something that requires, or is likely to require, care for more than three months; OR if the dependant has a disability for the purposes of the Equality Act; OR if they require care for a reason connected with their old age. So, for example, the definition could include an elderly parent, a disabled child or a partner undertaking ongoing cancer treatment.

Employees who are carers may request up to one week off work over a 12-month period for the purpose of providing this care. Time can be split up into periods of as little as half a day but cannot go over a week in total. Notice must be provided as follows:

• Requested time off for one day or less – three days’ notice required
• Requested time off for 1.5 days or more – twice the amount of notice as time requested (i.e., someone wanting to request 4 days off must request this at least 8 full days in advance)

Statutory carer’s leave does not have to be paid, but some employers will choose to introduce a paid contractual entitlement.

Normally a request for statutory carer’s leave will be granted by the employer. However, if the absence would cause undue disruption at a particular time, it may be possible to insist that the leave is postponed. The latest an employer can postpone statutory carer’s leave is one month after the original start date that was requested.

How big a change is this for practices? Probably not a very significant one; I imagine that most practices already grant staff members some unpaid time off for caring purposes where possible. But you should make sure your HR policies are updated to include the new entitlement and make your teams aware of it. Hypothetical situations where carer’s leave might be useful for staff include:

• Supporting an elderly parent to move into a new home
• Transitioning a disabled child into their new school or nursery
• Helping a relative or partner to attend planned appointments for an ongoing health problem

Paternity leave updates

Do you have any fathers-to-be in your workplace? Then make sure you (and they) are aware of upcoming changes to the way paternity leave works. You also need to ensure that your internal policy for paternity leave is updated. The changes run as follows:

• An employee requesting paternity leave only needs to give 28 days’ notice of the exact dates that leave will start and end (though they must still tell the employer of their general entitlement to paternity leave and their intention to take it at least 15 weeks prior to the expected week of childbirth)
• The two weeks of statutory paternity leave can be taken as two separate weeks if the employee prefers
• Paternity leave can be taken at any time in the 52 weeks (rather than the previous 56 days) following birth

All other elements of paternity leave, including pay entitlements, are unchanged.

Redundancy rights relating to pregnancy and family leave

If redundancies might be on the horizon, make sure you take good advice about how these changes in April might affect that process.

It is already established law that any employee on maternity leave who is made redundant gets ‘first dibs’ on any available (and appropriate) alternative vacancies in the organisation. This protection is being extended so that the following are all included:

• Pregnant employees
• Employees who are on maternity or adoption leave, or who have returned from either, and less than 18 months have passed since the child’s birth
• Employees who are on a period of shared parental leave lasting at least six consecutive weeks, or who have returned from such leave, and less than 18 months have passed since the child’s birth

Here is an example of what this means. Say a GP practice is making two receptionist positions redundant. Grace, who returned to work recently after giving birth 14 months ago, has been selected for redundancy. The other person selected is not pregnant and has never been on family leave before. The practice manager identifies that there is an available vacancy for an administrator at the practice. Originally, the manager thinks that Grace is not the best fit for this position as she has less experience than the other person selected for redundancy. However, after taking HR advice, she realises that Grace has the legal right to be offered this position ahead of the other employee. This might not feel fair in some respects, but overall, these rules will help to ensure that parents like Grace are supported to keep their jobs and careers whilst their children are very young.

Holiday pay at 12.07% – maybe?

This final change could be the subject of an entire blog, so I won’t go into much detail here (but see this previous HR Alert for more information).

If your practice has a holiday year running April-March and you have staff on your payroll whose contracts are either variable-hour (e.g., casual workers, zero-hour workers) or part-year (e.g., term-time workers whose pay is not averaged across the year), then subject to their individual contracts, you may be able to start paying them holiday pay at 12.07% each pay period, if that is what your practice wishes. Take HR or legal advice prior to implementing this to ensure that things are set up correctly, but it could be a useful change for many organisations.

If your holiday year runs January-December, though, you’ll need to wait until 2025 to start implementing any rolled-up pay. Sorry!

Changes for later this year

We are still expecting further legal changes to some or all of the following topics at a later point, so keep your eyes peeled on the HR Alerts section over the next 12 months. Once we know anything, we’ll let you know too!

• Introduction of neonatal leave
• Introduction of a right to request predictable working hours
• Introduction of a new duty to prevent sexual harassment at work
• Introduction of a new statutory code of practice for ‘fire and re-hire’ situations

Useful PLUS resources:

• Paternity Leave Policy
• Carers Policy for Staff
• Redundancy Policy
• Contract of employment for term-time employees paid for only part of the year (England) *
• Contract of employment – ad hoc and bank staff (England)
• Contract of employment – variable hours (England)

* Updated Scottish versions of these contract templates will also be available from early April.

Susi O’Brien