The Carer’s Leave Regulations 2024 came into force on 6 April 2024. They set out the statutory scheme under which employees can apply for up to one week of unpaid carer’s leave in any 12 month period.
Key features include:
- The right is a Day 1 employment right.
- The right applies to employees who have a dependent with a long-term care need and want to be absent from work to provide or arrange care for that dependant.
- Requests can be in consecutive or non-consecutive half-days or full days.
- Employees must give notice in writing of their intention to take carer’s leave. They must confirm their entitlement to take it and give whichever is the longer of at least twice the amount of notice than the period of leave requested or three days’ notice.
- You can postpone a request if the operation of the business would be unduly disrupted. In these circumstances, you must give notice of the postponement before the leave was due to begin – and explain why it is necessary. You must then allow the leave to be taken within one month of the start date of the leave originally requested. You should consulting with the employee about rescheduling the leave.
- Employees are protected from detriment and dismissal because they take or seek to take carer’s leave or because you believe they are likely to do so.
You should consider adding reference to carer’s leave in any existing policies or documents, such as an Employee Handbook, that reference other family/dependant leave, if you need help with this or if you have any queries regarding these changes please contact our HR team today.
