Neonatal care leave and pay – new laws with effect from 6 April 2025

7 February 2025

The Government plans to introduce new statutory neonatal care leave (SNCL) and statutory neonatal care pay (SNCP) with effect from 6 April 2025.

The current position is that there is no specific right to leave or pay for employees whose babies need neonatal care after birth. They must use their existing entitlement to maternity leave, adoption leave, shared parental leave or paternity leave. Some organisations have enhanced contractual policies to cover this but not all do and the new regulations might encourage more to revisit this. The legislation is welcome news to new parents who are dealing with the stress of a poorly baby.

Two sets of regulations have been laid before parliament and received Royal Assent:

the Neonatal Care (Leave and Pay) Act 2023

the Neonatal Care (Leave and Pay) Act 2023 (Commencement No 2) Regulations 2025 (SI 2025/41). The Regulations bring into effect the outstanding provisions of the Act with immediate effect.

So, what will this mean?

Eligible employees will be entitled to –

up to 12 weeks’ care leave

with no minimum qualifying service requirement

eligible employees with 26 weeks’ continuous service at the relevant date will also be entitled to care pay, paid at the same rate as statutory paternity pay

neonatal care will qualify for care leave and care pay if the child begins such care before they are 28 days old and the care lasts for at least seven days

care leave must be taken within 68 weeks of the child’s birth and may be added on to the end of another period of statutory leave, such as maternity leave

employees taking care leave will be entitled to the same protections as other employees taking statutory family-related leave, including –

the right to return to the same or another suitable role

protection from redundancy during and for a period after taking care leave

protection from detriment and

protection from unfair dismissal.

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