Leave | Shared Parental Leave

Leave | Shared Parental Leave

Overview

Shared Parental Leave is time off after having a baby, using a surrogate to have a baby, adopting a child or fostering a child who you’re planning to adopt.

Employees can share up to 52 weeks of leave and up to 37 weeks of pay between the employee and their partner. The employee is required to share the pay and leave in the first year after the child is born or placed with the family. The employee may also be required to give up some of their maternity or adoption leave and pay.

To get Shared Parental Leave (SPL) and Statutory Shared Parental Pay (ShPP), the employee or partner is required to meet the below criteria:

      1. Take less than the 52 weeks of maternity or adoption leave and use the rest as Shared Parental Leave.
      2. Take less than the 39 weeks of maternity or adoption pay (or Maternity Allowance) and use the rest as Shared Parental Leave.

For example, if the mother has taken 22 weeks of Maternity Leave and Statutory Maternity Pay, the 30 weeks of Shared Parental Leave and 17 weeks of Shared Parental Leave may be shared with their partner.                                                                

The employee can work up to 20 days during Shared Parental Leave without bringing it to an end. This is called ‘shared parental leave in touch’ (or SPLIT) days.

Note!
An employee taking Shared Parental Leave (SPL) can split their leave into up to 3 separate blocks instead of taking it all in one go, even if they are not sharing the leave with their partner.

Edition

This feature is available on all PaySpace editions

Details

Leave Eligibility

To be eligible for Shared Parental Leave (SPL) and Statutory Shared Parental Pay (ShPP), both parents must:

      1. Share responsibility for the child at birth.
      2. The employee or their partner must be eligible for statutory maternity pay (SMP) or leave, or statutory adoption pay (SAP) or leave or maternity allowance (MA).

The employee is not eligible if they started sharing responsibility for the child after birth.

If both parents would like to share the SPL and ShPP, both parents must meet the same eligibility criteria:

      1. Have been employed continuously by the same employer for at least 26 weeks by the end of the 15th week before the due date
      2. Stay with the same employer until employee starts Shared Parental Leave.

To be eligible for shared Parental Leave, the employee must be classified as ‘employees’ and not ‘workers’. If either of partner is a ‘worker’, the employee might be able to share Statutory Shared Parental Pay but not Shared Parental Leave.

To be eligible for Statutory Shared Parental Pay (ShPP), both partners must each earn on average at least £123 a week. If the employee usually earns an average of £123 or more a week each, and earned less in some weeks because you were on furlough under the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS), the employee may still be eligible.

ShPP is paid at the rate of £172.48 a week or 90% of  average weekly earnings, whichever is lower.

This is the same as Statutory Maternity Pay (SMP) except that during the first 6 weeks SMP is paid at 90% of whatever the employee earns (with no maximum).

Example
A woman decides to start her maternity leave 4 weeks before the due date and gives notice that she’ll start SPL from 10 weeks after the birth (taking a total of 14 weeks maternity leave). She normally earns £200 a week.

She’s paid £180 (90% of her average weekly earnings) as SMP for the first 6 weeks of maternity leave, then £172.48 a week for the next 8 weeks. Once she goes onto SPL, she’s still paid £172.48 a week.

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