Parental Leave – An Update

The government has now published draft regulations to extend the right to unpaid parental leave from 5 April 2015 to parents of all children under age 18.

The three main points to note from these draft regulations are as follows:

1. The ability to take leave in odd days under the fallback scheme will still only apply to parents of children to whom a disability living allowance is payable.
2. There are no transitional arrangements, so parents of children over age 5 who didn’t take their full entitlement to 18 weeks’ parental leave before the child’s 5th birthday will re-qualify on 5 April 2015 for the remainder of the leave.
3. This does not extend to N Ireland, but processes are in place for N Ireland to implement parallel rules.