Guidance relating to the new statutory payment that came into force on 06 April 2025 in Great Britain.
The Right to Statutory Neonatal Care Leave (SNCL)
- For eligible employees who have parental responsibility for children;
- Up to 12 weeks for employees whose child receives neonatal care in the first 28 days of life;
- Applicable from day 1 of employment, i.e. there is no qualifying service criterion; and
- This leave entitlement is in addition to existing child-related leave entitlements such as maternity, adoption and paternity leave.
The Right to Statutory Neonatal Care Pay (SNCP)
- Employees must meet service and earnings qualifying conditions;
- Pay is in addition to other child-related pay entitlements that may exist, for example, Statutory Maternity, Adoption and Paternity Pay; but
- Employees will not receive SNCP in any week that they are entitled to Statutory Sick Pay (SSP)
On 05 April 2025, the Department for Business and Trade (DBT) issued a Press Release but ICB wants to point you to guidance that you will be able to use in practice:
Gov.UK
HMRC and the Department for Business and Trade published the following guidance on 06 April 2025:
Employment rights are protected when the employee is taking Statutory Neonatal Care Leave, for example the right to accrue holiday leave and the right to return to the same job. However, the ‘Employee rights when taking maternity and other types of parental leave’ guidance has not been updated at the time of writing.
Acas
Acas announced it had produced guidance on 02 April 2025. A search on the word ‘neonatal’ gives 34 guidance pages, reflecting the facts that both SNCL and SNCP interact with other child-related statutory entitlements. Here are some of the guidance pages:
The Statutory Payments Manual
This was updated on 04 April 2025 starting at page 16700 (i.e. SPM167000). This has the following sections:
- SPM167100 - What is SNCP?;
- SPM167200 - What are Tier 1 and Tier 2?;
- SPM167300 - Conditions For Entitlement;
- SPM167400 - Neonatal Care Pay Period;
- SPM167500 - Neonatal Care Leave (NCL);
- SPM167600 - Notice and Evidence Requirements;
- SPM167700 - Employee Entitled to SSP;
- SPM167800 - Employee Not Entitled to SNCP;
- SPM167900 - Relevant Week;
- SPM168000 - What is Neonatal Care?;
- SPM168100 - Multiple Births From The Same Pregnancy;
- SPM171100 - Average Weekly Earnings (AWE) - SMP/SAP/SPP/SPBP/SNCP: definition of relevant period; and also
- SPM18000 - Paying and Recovering
Note this manual is all to do with the payment rather than the leave entitlement. Members should note page SPM171100 and consider the calculation of the Average Weekly Earnings (AWE) in SNCP cases:
- Where the employee is entitled to SMP, SPP or SAP, the relevant period for the AWE calculation is the same as that statutory payment; but
- Where the employee does not qualify, for example, their earnings were below the Lower Earnings Limit (LEL) for National Insurance Contributions, the relevant period for the AWE calculation is the week immediately before the one in which the neonatal care starts
For Bookkeepers
ICB suggests members may want to pass on this information to clients so they are able to implement this new statutory entitlement and develop occupational policies that interact with other ones such as maternity and paternity.
Note that the Statutory Payments Manual (SPM167800) says that where an employee is not entitled to pay then the employer should issue form SNCP1. This is incorrect and employers should issue form NEO1 as per the Gov.UK guidance. Further note that when completing this online form it is not possible to save your progress and return to it at a later time. Therefore, employers must ensure they have all information together before starting to complete.
