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For babies with an expected week of childbirth (EWC) after 6 April 2024, and for children placed for adoption on or after 6 April 2024, significant changes have been made to the law relating to periods of leave and notification requirements for paternity leave. As a result, the system that your client may be used to is changing radically.
For babies with an EWC of before 6 April 2024, employees have the choice of taking either one or two weeks as paternity leave within 56 days of the child’s birth. This must be taken either as one single block of one week or one single block of two weeks. If only one week is taken, the second week cannot be taken at another time. Notice of the leave must be given in or before the 15th week before the EWC, and it must specify, amongst other things, the days on which she wants to take leave.
As the child in this case has an EWC after 6 April 2024, your client should apply the new rules to this employee.
The first step your client should do is to ask the employee to provide notice of her entitlement to paternity leave. This must be done in or before the 15th week before the EWC. She must specify the EWC and declare that she is:
- Married to or the partner of the child’s mother but not the child’s father
- That she will have the main responsibility (apart from any responsibility of the mother) for the upbringing of the child.
Once that has been given, she will need to give a separate notice of the days on which she wants to take the leave. As she will be able to take it up to 52 weeks after the birth (not 56 days as it is under the rules for children with an EWC of before 6 April 2024), it might be some time before she provides notice of the dates she wants to take leave, especially if she chooses to take it around the time that her partner returns to work or the child’s first birthday.
What hasn’t changed for paternity leave is the entitlement to take unpaid time off work to accompany her partner at up to two antenatal appointments. Up to six and a half hours off work can be taken on each occasion. Not all antenatal appointments are included, however, as they must be on the advice of a registered doctor, nurse or midwife. Your client can ask for proof of the appointment if they want to.
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