The Paternity Leave (Amendment) Regulations 2024

The Paternity Leave (Amendment) Regulations 2024 have been published and make the following changes:

• Employees will be able to take their two-week paternity leave entitlement as two separate one-week blocks (rather than having to take just one week in total or two consecutive weeks).
• Employees will be able to take paternity leave at any time in the 52 weeks after birth or adoption (rather than within 8 weeks).
• Employees will only need to give 28 days’ notice of the dates they want to take paternity leave (reduced from 15 weeks before the Expected Week of Childbirth (EWC), although they should still give notice of their intention to take paternity leave within this time-frame).

The Regulations will apply from 6 April 2024 when the EWC (or week of adoption) is on, or after, 6 April 2024. (The same time as other family-friendly legal changes such as carer’s leave, flexible working and the extension of redundancy protection. See our Newsletter 2023 Issue 4 for more information on these).