Enhance Family Friendly Leave and Protection

Enhance Entitlement to Leave and Pay and Increase Protection from Redundancy

The Bill will enhance family friendly leave and protection by removing the length of service requirement for unpaid parental and paternity pay and enhance protection to prohibit dismissal for 6 months following a return to work from maternity leave.

Paternity Leave

The length of service requirement (26 weeks) for Paternity Pay will be removed; making leave and pay a day one entitlement.

The restriction on taking paternity leave following a period of shared parental leave will be removed. Currently if an employee takes a period of Shared Parental Leave they lose the right to take Paternity Leave.

Fact Sheet
The Government have published a Fact Sheet detailing their intentions in this area.

Download Now …

Implementation

The Employment Rights Bill Delivery Roadmap confirms that the measures will be introduced in April 2026.

Unpaid Parental Leave

Unpaid Parental Leave (also known as Ordinary Parental Leave) gives parents the right to take up to 18 weeks’ unpaid leave; at the rate of up to four weeks’ a year, for each child before their 18th birthday. There is currently a one-year qualifying period which will be removed, making the leave a day one entitlement. The intention is to make the right more accessible to employees, as the leave is unpaid I doubt removing the qualifying length of service would improve take up of the right.

Fact Sheet
The Government have published a Fact Sheet detailing their intentions in this area.

Implementation

The Employment Rights Bill Delivery Roadmap confirms that the measures will be introduced in April 2026.

Enhance Maternity Protection

Since 6 April 2024, women have been protected from a redundancy dismissal from the date they notified their employer of their pregnancy and up to 6 months following a return to work from maternity leave. The intention under the Employment Rights Bill is to enhance this by making it unlawful to dismiss a woman during pregnancy or within six months of her return to work. So protection will be enhanced from redundancy situations to any dismissal for instance: conduct, capability, loss of a statutory requirement and some other substantial reason.

Implementation

The Employment Rights Bill Delivery Roadmap confirms that the measures will be introduced in 2027 with a consultation planned in autumn 2025.

Review of the Family Leave System

In June 2025 the Women and Equalities Select Committee (WESC) published a report which stated that that the statutory parental leave system does not support working families and has fallen far behind most comparable countries. As a consequence the Government launched a comprehensive review into the whole complex family leave system. All current and upcoming parental leave and pay entitlements will be in scope of the review, namely:

• Maternity leave and pay.
• Paternity leave and pay.
• Adoption leave and pay.
• Shared parental leave and pay.
• Parental bereavement leave and pay.
• Parental leave (unpaid).
• Neonatal care leave and pay.
• Maternity Allowance.
• Bereaved partner’s paternity leave (unpaid) is in development and the government aims to bring the entitlement into force in 2026.

The review launched on 1 July 2025 and is expected to run for 18 months.

How Kea HR Can Help You

An hour of my time can save MANY hours of your time!

Get the Latest Legislation News and My Top Tips delivered straight to your inbox

Have a question? Let's have a chat and a coffee!

If you found this helpful and you would like to learn more about how I work with owners of small business who want to improve their HR management, please book some time in my diary.

Tap into and share the Kea world!

Don't forget to add Kea to your social networks and when you read an article that you like share it with your network!