Neonatal Care Leave and Pay - Employer Guide to the Day-One Right

Neonatal care leave is one of the newer statutory family rights, and it is one that many employers still have no policy for. It gives eligible parents up to 12 weeks of leave when their baby needs neonatal care, on top of any maternity, paternity or other family leave they are already entitled to.

The right was created by the Neonatal Care (Leave and Pay) Act 2023 and came into force on 6 April 2025. Crucially, the leave is a day-one right, so there is no qualifying period of service before an employee can take it. Every employer with staff of childbearing age needs to handle it correctly.

This guide sets out who qualifies, how much leave and pay applies, the notice rules, and the protections employers must respect.

What Neonatal Care Leave Is

Neonatal care leave is a period of paid or unpaid leave for parents whose baby is admitted to neonatal care. It recognises that the existing family leave entitlements were never designed for the situation where a newborn spends weeks in hospital, and that parents were often forced to use up maternity or paternity leave while their child was still in care.

The leave is separate from and additional to maternity, paternity, adoption and shared parental leave. It is designed to sit alongside those entitlements rather than replace any of them, so a parent can take neonatal care leave and still take their full maternity or paternity leave afterwards.

Why It Was Introduced

Around one in seven babies in the UK is admitted to neonatal care, and many stay for weeks. Before the Act, a parent in that situation had no dedicated right, so they typically used maternity or paternity leave while their baby was in hospital and then had little left for when the baby came home.

Neonatal care leave fills that gap by sitting on top of existing entitlements. It is a targeted right for a specific and difficult situation, and it is one that any employer can encounter regardless of size or sector.

Who Qualifies

The entitlement applies to parents with a genuine parental or other personal relationship with the baby, including the mother, the father, and the partner of the baby's mother. It covers employees regardless of how long they have worked for the employer, because the leave is a day-one right.

Three conditions define when the right is triggered:

The baby is admitted to neonatal care within the first 28 days after birth.
The baby receives that care for a continuous period of at least seven days.
The employee has, or expects to have, responsibility for the child's upbringing.

Neonatal care includes medical care in a hospital, as well as certain ongoing care in other settings under medical supervision. The seven-day qualifying period is counted from the day after the baby starts receiving care.

The Two Eligibility Tests in Practice

The split between a day-one right to leave and a 26-week service test for pay is the part employers most often get wrong. It is worth stating plainly: an employee with one week's service is entitled to the leave, but not to statutory pay.

This mirrors the structure of other statutory family rights, where leave and pay sit on different qualifying conditions. The practical consequence is that a manager should never refuse the leave on the basis of short service, even if the employee will not receive statutory pay. Refusing the time off is where a detriment or dismissal claim begins.

How Much Leave Applies

An employee can take one week of neonatal care leave for every seven continuous days their baby spends in neonatal care, up to a maximum of 12 weeks. The leave is taken in blocks of at least one week.

The rules distinguish between two periods, which affect how flexibly the leave can be taken:

While the baby is still receiving neonatal care, and for a week afterwards. During this period the leave can be taken in non-continuous blocks, reflecting the unpredictable nature of a hospital stay. The notice requirements are lighter.
After that period. Any remaining leave must be taken in a single continuous block, and longer notice applies.

Because neonatal care leave is added on top of other family leave, an employee whose baby spent eight weeks in care could take eight weeks of neonatal care leave and then begin or resume their maternity or paternity leave.

Neonatal Care Pay

Leave and pay have different eligibility tests. While the leave is a day-one right, statutory neonatal care pay requires the employee to have at least 26 weeks' continuous service by the relevant week and to earn at least the lower earnings limit.

From April 2026, statutory neonatal care pay is £194.32 a week, or 90% of the employee's average weekly earnings if that is lower. The lower earnings limit for the 2026 to 2027 tax year is £129 a week. The current statutory rates are published at GOV.UK: rates and thresholds for employers 2026 to 2027.

An employee who qualifies for the leave but not the pay, for example because they have under 26 weeks' service, can still take the leave on an unpaid basis. Employers reclaim statutory neonatal care pay in the same way as other statutory parental payments.

Notice and Evidence

The notice rules are deliberately light during the period when a baby is in care, because parents cannot plan around a medical emergency. In broad terms, an employee must tell their employer they are taking the leave, but they are not expected to give long advance notice while the care is ongoing.

For leave taken later, in a continuous block after the care period, more notice is required. Employers can ask for the dates and basic details but should not impose evidence requirements that are difficult to meet during a stressful time. The ACAS guidance on neonatal care leave and pay sets out the practical position.

Protection From Detriment and Dismissal

Employees taking neonatal care leave are protected from detriment and from dismissal for reasons connected to taking it. They also benefit from redundancy protection, meaning they must be offered any suitable alternative vacancy in a redundancy situation, in line with the enhanced protection that applies to family leave.

An employee returning from neonatal care leave is generally entitled to return to the same job. As with other family leave, getting the return wrong is where many claims arise, so the return should be handled with the same care as a return from maternity or paternity leave.

What Employers Should Do

Because this is a day-one right with no service qualification, every employer needs a clear position before the situation arises. The following steps put that in place.

Adopt a neonatal care leave policy. Set out eligibility, the leave and pay entitlements, how notice is handled and how the leave interacts with other family leave.
Train managers to respond well. The first conversation usually happens at a distressing moment. Managers should know the leave exists, that it is a day-one right, and that they should not demand burdensome evidence.
Update payroll. Make sure payroll can administer statutory neonatal care pay and apply the correct rate and eligibility test.
Coordinate with other leave. Plan how neonatal care leave sits alongside maternity, paternity and shared parental leave so entitlements are not accidentally reduced.
Document the return to work. Treat the return with the same rigour as any family-leave return, including the right to return to the same role.

A Worked Example

An employee's baby is born and admitted to neonatal care two days after birth, staying for six continuous weeks. The mother is on maternity leave. The father, who has worked for the employer for three months, wants time off to be with the family.

The father qualifies for neonatal care leave from day one of employment, so his three months' service is no barrier to the leave. He can take up to six weeks of neonatal care leave, one week for each seven days the baby is in care. Because he has under 26 weeks' service, he does not qualify for statutory neonatal care pay, so this leave is unpaid, but the right to the time off stands. His entitlement to paternity leave is unaffected and remains available afterwards.

The mother can take neonatal care leave too, and crucially it does not eat into her maternity leave. Her maternity leave resumes or begins as planned once the neonatal care leave is used, which is the central benefit the Act was designed to deliver.

How It Differs From Other Family Leave

It helps to be clear about where neonatal care leave fits. It is not parental bereavement leave, which applies on the death of a child, and it is not the same as the unpaid parental leave that became a day-one right in April 2026.

Neonatal care leave is specific to a baby receiving neonatal care in the first 28 days of life, and it is additional to every other entitlement. The most common employer error is to treat it as part of an existing allowance rather than a standalone right, which has the effect of reducing leave the employee is lawfully entitled to.

How Policy Pros Can Help

Neonatal care leave is straightforward to administer once the policy exists, and a source of risk where it does not. The day-one nature of the right means there is no margin for an organisation to be caught without a position.

Policy Pros writes and updates the maternity, paternity, adoption and parental leave policies that should now include neonatal care leave, so that eligibility, pay and notice are documented in one place. We can align them with your paternity leave and pay policies and your wider HR policies and procedures.

For the related day-one family rights that also took effect in April 2026, see our day-one family leave employer guide.