Understanding Shared Parental Leave and how it might benefit you, and the other options for your maternity leave
19 April 2015
By Louise Haward
You may have heard about the new system of Shared Parental Leave (“SPL”), introduced for babies born after 5 April 2015, to enable parents more flexibility in how they share the care of their child in the first year after birth.
Whilst the concept itself is easy enough to understand, lots of expectant mums and dads are unsure as to how the new scheme works in practice or when this might be an option that they could consider as opposed to the more traditional leave available on the birth of a child.
To help, we’ve set out a quick guide as to the main important points to remember about SPL:
SPL allows two parents to share what would ordinarily be the mother’s maternity leave. A ‘parent’ can be the child’s mother, father or mother’s partner – it does not extend to other family members such as a grandmother or uncle;
At least one parent must be an employee who has worked at their place of work for at least 26 weeks by the 15th week before the baby is due. Where both parents meet this criteria, they will both be able to take time off work after the birth to look after their child, either at the same time or at different times;
If only one parent meets the employment criteria, they could still use the SPL scheme if the other parent is self-employed, an agency worker or a contractor and they meet certain criteria in relation to minimum earnings. In this case, the parent who is the employee could use SPL to take blocks of leave with work in between;
Mothers still have to take at least two weeks compulsory maternity leave after the baby is born (or 4 weeks if they work in a factory) before taking SPL. The remaining maternity leave (a maximum of 50 weeks) can then be converted to SPL to share;
To be able to take SPL, the mother must stop her maternity leave (and pay) and opt-in to the SPL system and there are a series of notices that must be given by both parents to the employer(s);
Those taking SPL may also be eligible for Shared Parental Pay (“ShPP”), so up to 37 weeks maternity pay can be converted into ShPP to share between the parents.
SPL is an alternative, not a replacement, to the existing maternity and statutory paternity leave schemes and these other options for taking leave before and after birth are still available. So mums will continue to be able to take up to 52 weeks of maternity leave and dad or the mother’s partner can still take up to 2 weeks’ ordinary paternity leave. Any unused paternity leave is lost once SPL has started, so usually it will be best for this to be used up before starting SPL.
Additional paternity leave, however, is no longer available for a parent whose baby is expected to be born on or after 5 April 2015.
If you would like to know more about SPL, maternity, paternity or adoption leave, we’re happy to help! We will be available during this week’s forum on the topic or contact Louise Haward by email on louise.haward@smithpartnership.co.uk.