From the 6th April 2024, unpaid carers across Great Britain, including Wales, will have new rights under the law. This right is for all unpaid carers to take up to one week of unpaid leave from their employer per year to provide unpaid care to someone.
What new rights will this give me as a carer?
The Carer's Leave Act will:
- introduce a new and flexible entitlement to one week’s* unpaid leave per year for employees who are providing or arranging care for a relative or dependant
- be available from the first day of their employment
- allow employees to take the leave flexibly for planned and foreseen caring commitments
- offer the same employment protections to employees taking this leave that are associated with other forms of family-related leave, meaning they will be protected from dismissal or any detriment because of having taken time off.
Fundamentally, if someone needs additional care, you will be able to take extra unpaid time off.
*See how a week is described in the Questions and Answers section below.
How will this new law work?
Carer’s Leave will work like any other leave request you make to your employer. You will use your employer’s leave request procedure and define that you would like this to be carer’s leave.
Your employer will grant or postpone carer’s leave like any other leave request but must consult and discuss with you if they want to postpone this request. Your employer must evidence that you taking carer’s leave on the date requested would unduly affect their business.
By taking carer’s leave, you are potentially forfeiting the money you may have earned by working that time for your employer. However, this is additional leave from holiday or sick leave and gives you the same employment protections as taking any other type of leave.
Anyone who takes carer’s leave will have the full rights and entitlements of any other statutory or contractual leave so your employer can not discriminate against you in any way for taking it. If you have concerns you are being discriminated against due to taking carer’s leave, you should immediately contact your Human Resources team or get in contact with a union or other representative.
Would you like to hear more about the Carer's Leave Act as a carer?
We're running a special online session on Tuesday 26 March.
Questions and Answers
You are likely to have questions about how the Carer's Leave Act will work. We have broken down the most common questions below.
Please note, this content is built on the draft regulations that have not yet been approved by the House of Parliament. Every effort to ensure that this information is correct, but it is not an authoritative statement of the law
Any amendments will be made in a timely way.
Under the Carer’s Leave Act, the amount of time each unpaid carer can request is up to one working week.
A week is defined by your contract with your employer:
- If you are contracted as a full-time employee, this will be 5 days
- If you are a part-time employee, this will be your contracted hours rounded up to the nearest half day.
- If you are on a variable week-to-week contract, this will be how many hours you have worked for your employer – up to 1 year – divided by the number of weeks you have worked for your employer, rounded up to the nearest half day and up to a maximum of 5 days.
This means if you are on a 21-hour part-time contract for an organisation, you will receive three days of unpaid care leave under the Act. It does not matter if your employer runs a 35 or 37.5-hour standard work week, as the leave is rounded up to the nearest half day.
If you work variable shifts, it will be worked out on your average number of hours per week. For example, if you work 21 hours one week and 28 hours the next week, you would receive 3.5 days of unpaid care leave per year. This would be 21 (hours) x 26 (weeks) + 28 (hours) x (26 weeks) divided by 52 (weeks) to give you an average of 24.5 hours or 3.5 days.
If you are working on a variable contract, you should speak to your employer to confirm what days you are eligible for.
Your allocation of Carer’s Leave may be affected if you have had a period of absence due to long-term sick leave beyond what is allocated in your contract. If this has happened to you, your employer can choose to deduct a set period in line with the additional amount of time you were absent from work.
For instance, if you have missed 3 months of work from a full-time contract in the year financial year April 2023 to March 2024, your Carer’s Leave could be reduced by 1.25 days (a quarter of your Carers Leave allowance) rounded up to the nearest half day. In this case, you would only have 4 Carer’s Leave days instead of 5.
It is in your employer’s gift whether they choose to make this amendment or not.
Your first allocation of Carer’s Leave will automatically begin when the law is activated on the 6th April 2024.
Your allocation of Carer’s Leave will reset in line with your employer’s annual leave policy which usually runs on the calendar year (January to December) or the financial year (April to March).
When you join a new employer, your ‘Carers Leave’ will be fully enabled after you have completed one full work week as defined under your employment contract. This will be 35 or 37.5 hours for full-time employees or the number of hours you are contracted per week as a part-time employee.
If you need to take Carer’s Leave in the first week of employment, you are eligible for the number of days you have worked (rounded to the half day) divided by your contract length.
It would be recommended that you speak to your new employer before beginning your new role if this is a possibility so the correct procedures can be put in place.
Anyone who is providing care for someone who has a long-term health condition is eligible to take this leave.
This includes anyone providing care for someone with a disability, illness, mental health concern, has care needs due to being older, or any other difficulty that requires the employee to provide unpaid care.
This does exclude children under the age of 18 who do not have a condition as defined in the previous paragraph. If you require leave for a child, you already have certain legal rights under the Maternity and Parental Leave etc. Regulations 1999.
Carer’s Leave can be used for any activity reasonably considered providing or arranging care for someone with a long-term health condition.
This can include anything from taking someone to and/or attending medical appointments, to providing direct care for someone who has a gap in their care need to meeting with or acquiring professional services to provide care for someone.
It is up to you as the individual to decide whether you believe you are justified in taking the leave.
Your employer does not have a right to request information on what you are doing with your unpaid care leave.
Carer’s Leave must be taken in units of half days, defined as 3.5 or 4 hours, depending on your employers' definition of a working day.
These half-day units can be taken individually or consecutively up to your maximum allocation of Carers Leave available.
For example, if you would like to take Carer’s Leave to take someone to a hospital appointment at 2pm, you can take one unit of half-day Carer’s Leave. In this scenario, you can work until 1pm and then take the rest of the day off.
If you need to take a longer period of time off, you can take half days consecutively. For example, if a family member is going on holiday and you need to provide more care that week, you could take all your Carer’s Leave in one week.
However, if you have previously taken half a day of Carer’s Leave as in the first example and then need to take consecutive days as shown in the second example, you will need to make up the missing half day with another form of leave such as annual leave.
Your employer can also choose to give you additional Carer’s Leave beyond the statutory amount as part of your contract or as a gift at the time. If you need additional Carer’s Leave, you should discuss this with your manager or Human Resources department.
Your employer defines the flexibility of these half days.
Some employers may define the half day as a certain period of the day. For instance, the morning being defined as being between the hours of 9am and 1pm and afternoon being defined as 1pm to 5pm. Some may be more flexible to allow the half day to be taken at any point in the working day.
If your employer defines the half day as a distinct period of time, you may need to take more than one half day off if the reason you are taking the leave crosses over the time periods defined by your employer.
If you do shift work, your employer must define half a day as half the standard shift length across the organisation. This will be defined by your employer's working practices and will be different for each organisation.
You will take Carer’s Leave like you take any other leave from your employer.
The only difference will be that you will now define this as taking it under Carer’s Leave instead of annual leave, sick leave or other types of leave that you have under your contract.
As previously stated, you will be taking this in half-day increments that can be taken consecutively.
You need to make a request for Carer’s Leave a minimum of three days before you plan to take Carer’s Leave or 5 days if you would like to take more than 3 consecutive days of Carer’s Leave.
For example, if you want to take all 5 days of Carer’s Leave in one go, you need to tell your employer at least one week before you want to take that leave.
Your employer can choose to waive this period for emergencies. This can be stated in your contract or being gifted to you at the time. If your employer chooses this, you can request Carer’s Leave will work with the same protections as the statutory law states.
Your employer cannot extend these leave request times in your contract.
Yes and no.
Your employer can postpone your request for Carer’s Leave but cannot reject it. Like other types of leave, your employer can say that if you were to take leave on a certain date it would unduly disrupt the operation of a business, another date should be found.
If your employer wants to postpone your Carer’s Leave, the date must be within one month of the first date you have requested Carer’s Leave and they have a legal duty to consult you before they issue the postponement. Your employer must send you a notice in writing if they are going to postpone your Carer’s Leave giving their reasons for the postponement. You are able to challenge this request through your manager or human resources department.
Your employer must give you notice of postponement within 7 days of you making your Carer’s Leave request or before the first date you wish to take Carer’s Leave if you have made the legal request with less than 7 days of notice.
If you make a request for Carer’s Leave in an emergency that does not comply with the rules defined under ‘How do I take Carer’s Leave?’, your employer has the right to issue a postponement without consultation.
The Carer’s Leave Act creates new protections under the Employment Rights Act 1996 to enable carers who need to take additional leave from their employment to provide unpaid care without endangering their job.
It is for you to decide whether you choose to take this leave as unpaid or choose to use annual leave or other types of leave to accomplish this.
It is Carers UK’s ultimate goal to have this law upgraded to a week’s paid leave and this Act is an important first step towards that goal while giving carers additional protections now.
Under the Carer’s Leave Act you only have the right to take unpaid Carer’s leave.
However, your employer has the gift to continue to pay you when you are taking Carer’s Leave. You can request this when you take Carer’s Leave but it is the employer's choice whether they grant this or not.
You do not have any legal right to have Carer’s Leave paid under the Carer’s Leave Act.
You may also have a contractual guarantee of a certain number of days of paid Carer’s Leave. You should speak to your manager or human resources department to see if you have paid Carer’s Leave as part of your contract.
When you take unpaid Carer’s Leave, each half day you are not at work is taken from your paycheck at source.
Your employer’s payment team needs to be informed of when you are taking it and will remove half a day's pay from your salary or pay packet for each half day of Carer’s Leave you take.
If you are a contracted employee, this will be worked out as salary divided by your hours and the defined period of time considered a half day (either 3.5 or 4 hours) removed for each half day of Carer’s Leave taken.
If you work on an hourly rate, it will be the hourly rate that you were not in work.
This reduced income should apply to the next pay cheque you receive.
This will depend on how your contract is worded.
Your legal right is to have 5 days of carer leave.
Your employer could define this as those 5 days of carer leave are being paid for but no more can be claimed. It could be that you have 5 days of contractual paid care leave and you have another legal right to 5 days of unpaid care leave.
As the majority of contracts were written before the Carer’s Leave Act, there is a high likelihood of ambiguity within the wording of the contract. You should consult with your manager or human resources department about how your employer is going to apply this moving forwards.
If you have less than 5 days of paid care leave, you are able to take up to the legal maximum as unpaid care leave. For example, you have 3 days of paid care leave, you can take a minimum of another 2 days unpaid without permission from your employer. You may be able to take those 3 and 5 days unpaid if your employer sets this out in your contract.
If you have more than 5 days of paid leave in your contract, the new law will not affect this contractual right. Your employer may or may not allow an additional 5 days unpaid care leave.
No, the new law gives you protections to enable you to take caring leave.
You should return to work like any other leave and continue your usual contracted job.
The Carer’s Leave Act states that someone who takes Carer’s Leave cannot be subjected to any detriment for taking Carer’s Leave. This means:
- an employee’s position within an organisation cannot alter due to taking Carer’s Leave
- an employee’s pension, or other benefits, cannot be affected by taking Carer’s Leave
- an employee’s terms and conditions cannot be affected by taking Carer’s Leave
- an employee cannot be overlooked for a promotion due to Carer’s Leave
- Carer’s Leave cannot be given as a reason for someone to be disciplined or dismissed
If an employer were to change your role, discipline you or change your duties without consulting you due to taking Carer’s Leave, they would be breaking the Carer’s Leave Act and the Employment Rights Act 1996.
If you think you were being discriminated against for taking Carer’s Leave, you should raise a complaint through your organisations complaint processes or, if required, through an employment tribunal.
