Sharing the caring
Here’s another thing for employers to cope with - parents who want to share their parental pay and leave entitlements.
Where the parents are expecting a child to be born, or adopted, on or after 5 April 2015, they are now entitled to share the 52 weeks of maternity leave and 39 weeks of maternity pay or maternity allowance. You need to be ready to deal with claims from your employees, and to report the details of shared pay in RTI reports.
The parents generally have to give you eight weeks’ notice of a period of shared parental leave, so you could receive such requests from now on. The shared leave can be taken at any time within a year starting with the date of birth or adoption of the child.
The parents need to self-certify that they both meet the following conditions for shared parental leave:
- be employed or self-employed in Great Britain for 26 weeks in the 66 week period that ends with the week before the birth week; and
- have average earnings of £30 or more in at least 13 of those 26 weeks.
To qualify for shared parental pay the parent must also have earned an average salary of at least the lower earnings limit for the eight weeks prior to the 15th week before the expected birth date. That pay threshold must be met by both parents if the statutory pay is to be shared.
You don’t have to check the facts supplied on self-certified claims but you must record the name and NI number of the other parent, who is sharing the leave/pay to report to HMRC.
