Employment Rights Act update: New family leave rights explained 

When the Employment Rights Act 2025 (ERA 2025) received Royal Assent last December, it came with a promise of phased implementation. For some employers, that phrasing created breathing room that was never really there. Several provisions are already in force, and the changes to family leave that took effect this April are among the most operationally immediate. For any business with employees who are parents or partners, the legal position has already shifted. 

Day-one rights for paternity and parental leave 

Two qualifying periods have now gone. Previously, an employee needed 26 weeks of continuous service to take paternity leave and a full year to access unpaid parental leave. Both thresholds have been removed, and both forms of leave are now available from the first day of employment. That is a more significant change than it might initially appear. It means a new starter who becomes a father or partner in their first week at work has an immediate statutory right to leave that the employer cannot refuse on the basis of short service. 

What has not changed is the qualifying period for statutory paternity pay, which remains at 26 weeks. Leave and pay are therefore now on different tracks: an employee may take the leave while being entitled to nothing beyond it in statutory pay terms. This is the same structure that has always applied to maternity leave and pay, and it is a distinction HR and payroll teams need to have a firm grip on, particularly when communicating entitlements to new starters. 

The ERA 2025 also removes the old restriction that barred employees from taking paternity leave after a period of shared parental leave. In practice, this gives families more genuine choice in how they sequence time off around a birth or adoption, without one decision closing off another. 

For employers, the cumulative effect is straightforward: family leave requests can now land on day one. Policies that still tie eligibility to a service threshold are wrong in law. More pressingly, a line manager who turns down a paternity leave request from a new starter because they haven’t been there long enough is exposing the business to a claim. Getting that message to managers is not a paperwork problem. It is a training one. 

Bereaved partner’s paternity leave 

The Bereaved Partner’s Paternity Leave Regulations 2026, which also came into force alongside the ERA 2025 changes, introduced an entitlement that is new in kind rather than merely amended in scope. Where a child’s mother or primary carer dies within the first 52 weeks of the child’s birth or adoption placement, the surviving partner or co-parent may take up to 52 weeks of unpaid leave. It is a day-one right, and it runs alongside existing statutory bereavement leave entitlements rather than displacing them. 

Most employers will not encounter this often. But the situations that give rise to it are among the gravest any workplace will face, and the response, both legal and human, carries real weight. A manager who handles such a request badly, whether through ignorance of the entitlement or simple insensitivity, causes harm that extends well beyond any legal liability. Policies need updating, and managers need briefing. ACAS has published guidance on bereaved partner’s paternity leave that is worth working through alongside any internal policy revision. 

Neonatal care leave 

Not an ERA 2025 change, but worth addressing in the same breath: neonatal care leave came into force in April 2025 and is already live. Where a newborn requires hospital-based neonatal care, eligible parents are entitled to up to 12 weeks of additional statutory leave and pay, on top of their existing family leave entitlements. Leave is available from day one of employment; the qualifying period for pay is 26 weeks. Any employer carrying out a family leave policy review who has not yet incorporated neonatal care leave should treat that as part of the same exercise, not a separate one. 

What is still to come 

The ERA 2025 is not finished with family leave. Several of its most substantive provisions in this area are still to arrive. 

Section 27 of the Act is worth particular attention. It extends enhanced dismissal protection to employees returning from a wider range of statutory family leave, going beyond the existing protections that apply on return from maternity and adoption leave. The government’s stated intention is to make it automatically unfair to dismiss a woman while pregnant, during maternity leave, or for at least six months after her return to work, except in tightly defined circumstances, with comparable protections extended more broadly across family leave types. A consultation on the precise fairness test closed in January 2026. The options on the table ranged from a gross misconduct threshold to a serious business detriment test. Secondary legislation will set out the detail, with implementation expected in 2027. 

That timetable matters for how employers handle decisions now. An employee dismissed or selected for redundancy during or after family leave today may not yet have the full benefit of those protections, but the legal landscape in which any subsequent dispute is resolved will look quite different by the time it reaches a tribunal. Caution is warranted. 

The government is also developing an extended bereavement leave framework that will cover pregnancy loss before 24 weeks. The absence of statutory protection in that situation has long been a gap, and its inclusion in the ERA 2025 signals a firm intention to close it, with implementation again expected in 2027. Separately, a wider review of the parental leave and pay framework is underway, with conclusions and any reform proposals anticipated in late 2026 or early 2027. 

The Fair Work Agency 

The Fair Work Agency (FWA) was established on 7^th April 2026, consolidating enforcement functions that were previously spread across several bodies. Its remit covers the national minimum wage, holiday pay, statutory sick pay, and related areas. Crucially, it has powers to inspect premises and records and to issue civil penalties without waiting for an employee to bring a claim. 

For employers managing family leave, that last point is the one to take seriously. Incomplete or inaccurate records around paternity leave, parental leave, or statutory pay are now a potential trigger for regulatory scrutiny, not only an internal HR problem. The audit trail around how leave was recorded, how pay was calculated, and how requests were handled needs to be in a state that would withstand external inspection. 

Getting ready 

Policy updates are necessary but not sufficient. The more common failure point is the distance between what a revised policy says and what a line manager actually does when a request arrives. An employee who joins on a Monday and requests paternity leave on a Wednesday is exercising a statutory right. If the manager’s instinct is to check how long they’ve been there before responding, the policy revision has not done its job. 

Treating this as an organisational readiness question rather than a documentation exercise means something specific: HR and payroll need to understand the leave and pay distinction clearly enough to explain it; managers need to know what they can and cannot do when a request comes in; and the record-keeping infrastructure needs to reflect the FWA’s new capacity to look behind individual claims. The 2027 changes, particularly the broadened dismissal protections under Section 27, belong in that planning too. How employees in those circumstances are treated today will eventually be assessed against a legal standard that is considerably harder to satisfy than the current one. 

The ERA 2025 is still being implemented. That is not a reason to wait. 

If you would like guidance on updating your employment policies or managing family leave entitlements under the ERA 2025, our employment team would be happy to help. 

About the Author: Steph Marsh is the Head of the Employment Law team at Coodes Solicitors. She has extensive experience in supporting both employers and employees on contentious and non-contentious matters, particularly surrounding discrimination issues, redundancy situations and data protection law. 

Get in touch: steph.marsh@coodes.co.uk  01579 324 017