In addition to the changes required in the key terms and conditions of employment, there are other employment law changes that came into effect from April 2020.
Parental Bereavement Leave ** New Legislation**
On 23 January 2020, the Government announced that the Parental Bereavement (Leave and Pay) Act 2018 will be coming into force on 6 April 2020.
The Act gives employees who lose a child under the age of 18 or suffer a stillbirth from the 24th week of pregnancy, on or after this date, the right to two weeks’ leave. Regulations specify that the two weeks’ leave may be taken as one block, or as two non-consecutive one-week blocks, at any time during the 56 weeks following the child’s death.
The leave will be paid at the same statutory rate as other family friendly rights (e.g. Statutory Maternity Pay) if the employee has 26 weeks’ service.
Employed parents are already entitled, as a day one right, to take a reasonable amount of unpaid time off to deal with emergencies involving a dependent, including dealing with a dependent’s death.
It is advised that relevant Leave of Absence policies should be updated with this information.
If you would like to discuss developing and implementing a Parental Bereavement Leave policy or reviewing your Employee Handbook to ensure that this statutory leave is included, please give me a call for a free initial consultation.
Agency Workers Regulations 2010
From 6 April 2020, the Swedish derogation is removed. Once agency workers have satisfied the 12-week qualifying period, they will be entitled to equal pay to workers who are engaged directly by the employer.
By 30 April 2020 agency workers whose existing contracts contain a Swedish derogation provision must be provided with a written notification by the agency that it will no longer have effect.
In addition, from 6 April 2020 all agency work-seekers must be provided with a key facts statement setting out the terms under which they will undertake the work.
Holiday pay reference period changes
From 6 April 2020, the holiday pay reference period will increase from 12 weeks to 52 weeks. Employers will be required to look back at the previous 52 weeks where a worker has worked and received pay (discarding any weeks not worked or where no pay was received), to calculate the average weekly pay.
This change applies to workers without fixed hours or pay and only applies to holiday pay calculations.
Changes to National Wage Rates
New rates of pay apply from 1 April 2020 for all employees and workers: www.gov.uk/national-minimum-wage-rates
In addition employers should not the following statutory weekly payments, that have also increased:
Statutory Sick Pay: £95.85
Statutory Maternity Pay: £151.20 (This rate applies to other statutory payments paid at SMP)
Redundancy Pay cap: £538 per week
What should you be doing now?
If you weren’t aware of these changes and want further information on any aspect of these legislation changes or your employment policies and procedures, please give me a call.
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