Government reforms (1): Family friendly – grandparents have rights too?

What do we already know?

Parental Leave: In our December 2014 and April 2015 Newsflashes available here and here we let you know of the changes to Parental Leave. These mean that from 5 April all parents of children aged 0 to 18 with one year’s service have up to 18 weeks parental leave per child.

What’s new?

David Cameron said he would look at Labour plans to allow Grandparents to share their children’s unpaid 18 week parental leave allowance.

These plans were initially proposed under pre-election plans from the Labour Party. At Prime Minister’s Questions recently, Harriet Harman, Labour’s interim deputy leader, said:€œWe know that grandparents often help out. Most parents say they just could not manage without the grandparents, but increasingly those grandparents are not retired but are themselves working… Will the Prime Minister agree to look at how we can help grandparents get flexibility at work by allowing them to share parental leave?” Mr Cameron replied:€œI am certainly happy to look at that because the right to request flexible working has been championed by this Government.”