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Overview of the employment legislative changes in April 2024

April is a month of many employment law changes which organisations need to be aware of. Below is an overview of the legislative changes which have taken place, along with details of the increases in various statutory payments.

Flexible working

The changes to the rules on flexible working have now come into force. This means that as of the 6th April 2024:

• Flexible working is now a "day one" right, meaning that the eligibility requirement for an individual to have 26 weeks' continuous service before making a request, has now been removed.
• The number of flexible working requests an individual can make in a 12-month period has increased from one to two.
• There is a new requirement for employers to consult with the employee before rejecting their flexible working request.
• The decision period (within which an employer shall consider the statutory request and deal with this) is reduced from 3 months to 2 months.
• The existing requirement that the employee must explain what effect, if any, the change applied for would have on the employer and how that effect might be dealt with has been removed.

The 8 business reasons for rejecting a flexible working request remain, such as the burden of additional costs, the inability to reorganise work among existing staff etc.

The Acas Code of Practice on requests for flexible working has been amended to incorporate the changes to flexible working with effect from the 6th April 2024. The Code has been designed to provide clarity to employers and employees on making and handling requests for flexible working and whilst the Code imposes no legal obligations and a failure to observe it does not by itself make any person liable to legal proceedings, employment tribunals will take the Code into account when considering relevant cases.

Carer's Leave

There is a new statutory day one right to unpaid carer's leave for employees in England, Scotland and Wales. This took effect from the 6th April 2024. An employee who has a dependant with a long-term care need and wants to be absent from work to provide or arrange care for that dependant may take one week's unpaid leave to provide or arrange care in a rolling 12 month period.

What a "week" is will depend on what period the employee is normally expected to work in a week at the time of making the request. If an individual works variably, a week's leave will be the average of a week's work. This can be calculated by dividing the total of the periods for which that individual is normally required to work during the course of a week in the previous 12 months by 52, or if employed for less than a year, the total periods for which that individual is normally required to work during the course of a week by the number of weeks they have been employed.

A person is a dependant for the purposes of carer's leave if they are a spouse, civil partner, child or parent of the employee or live in the same household as the employee (otherwise than by reason of being the employee's border, employee, lodger or tenant), or reasonably rely on the employee to provide or arrange care. A dependant has a "long term care need" for these purposes if they have an illness or injury (whether physical or mental) that requires, or is likely to require, care for more than three months, they have a disability for the purposes of the Equality Act 2010 or they require care for a reason connected with their old age.

The leave may be taken in either individual days or half days, up to a block of one week. The required notice period is either twice as many days as the period of leave required, or three days, whichever is greater. So for example, if an individual wants to take 2 days of carer's leave they would need to give 4 days' notice. The notice does not need to be in writing and an employer cannot require evidence in relation to the request before granting the leave.

An employer cannot decline a request altogether but may postpone carer's leave in very limited circumstances and where certain criteria are met e.g if this may cause undue disruption to the business. An employer would need to agree an alternative date for the individual to take the leave and this must start no later than a month after the date the employee originally requested to take this leave. For example, if they asked for a day of carer's leave on the 1st June the alternative date would need to start no later than the 1st July. When a new date has been agreed an employer would need to set out in writing the reason for the postponement and the agreed dates on which the leave can be taken. This needs to be given to the employee no later than the earlier of seven days after the employee gave notice that they wanted to take carer's leave, or before the earliest day the employee requested the leave.

Paternity leave

Changes to paternity leave have taken effect in relation to children whose expected week of childbirth is after the 6th April 2024 and children whose expected date for placement for adoption or expected date of entry into Great Britain for adoption is on or after the 6th April 2024. The changes will allow fathers and partners to take their leave and pay as two non-consecutive blocks of one week, rather than only in one block of either one or two weeks.

The leave can be taken at any point in the first year after the birth or adoption of their child and the notice period required for each period of leave will be shortened to 28 days' notice.

There still remains a requirement for an individual to confirm their entitlement to take paternity leave which must be provided to their employer before the 15th week before the expected week of childbirth.

Additional redundancy protection

There are now changes in force to the redundancy protection for those who are pregnant or on maternity leave, shared parental leave or adoption leave.

The Protection from Redundancy (Pregnancy and Family Leave) Act 2023 extends the right to priority for suitable alternative employment in a redundancy situation. For pregnancy and maternity the protected period applies from the point an employee notifies their employer they are pregnant and until 18 months after the child's estimated week of childbirth, or the exact birth date of the child if the employee gives the employer notice of this date. For adoption the protected period will cover 18 months from placement for adoption, and for shared parental leave the protected period will cover 18 months from birth, provided that the parent has taken a period of at least 6 consecutive weeks of shared parental leave. This protection will not apply if the employee already has protection either because of pregnancy/maternity or adoption provisions. The redundancy protection afforded means that these employees have the right to be offered suitable alternative employment in a redundancy situation.

Where the protected period covers pregnancy, the new provisions apply where the employee notifies the employer of their pregnancy on or after the 6th April 2024. The new rules apply to maternity and adoption leave ending on or after 6th April 2024 and to a period of six consecutive weeks' shared parental leave starting on or after 6th April 2024.

Holidays for irregular hours and part year workers

For holiday years starting on or after the 1st April 2024 there is now a new method of calculating holiday entitlement for irregular hours and part-year workers. The terms "irregular hours" and "part year worker" are defined in new Regulations, and include workers whose hours are irregular (such as casual workers and some agency workers), and workers who under their contract have periods in the year of at least one week where they do not work and are not paid, such as hourly paid, term time workers. For these workers, their holiday entitlement will be calculated in hours rather than weeks and will accrue on the last day of each pay period at the rate of 12.07% of the actual hours worked in that pay period. Employers will be able to chose from two systems of holiday pay - this can be calculated by working out the average amount of weekly pay over the previous 52 weeks or pay rolled up holiday pay. Rolled up holiday pay would be an uplift of 12.07% of the worker's remuneration for work done in each pay period.

Increases to the National Minimum Wage and National Living Wage

There have been changes in the rates of National Minimum Wage and National Living Wage to be paid for the pay period beginning on or after the 1st April 2024. The new rates are listed below. It is worth noting that the age at which people qualify for the National Living Wage has been lowered from 23 to 21 years old.

• Aged 21 and above (National Living Wage rate) £11.44
• Aged 18 to 20 inclusive £8.60
• Aged under 18 (but above compulsory school leaving age) £6.40
• Apprentice rate £6.40

Statutory Maternity, Paternity, Adoption, Shared Parental and Parental Bereavement Pay increases

The Government has increased the rates of statutory pay which are effective from the 7th April 2024.

The rate for Statutory Sick Pay increases to £116.75 a week for employees working five qualifying days a week.

The rates of Statutory Maternity Pay and Statutory Adoption Pay (after the first 6 weeks) will be £184.03 per week or 90% of the employee's average weekly earnings, whichever is lower. The rate for the first 6 weeks remains at 90% of the employee's average weekly earnings.

Statutory Paternity Pay, Statutory Shared Parental Pay and Statutory Parental Bereavement Pay will all be £184.03 or 90% of the employee's average weekly earnings, whichever is lower.

Employment Tribunal compensation limits

The statutory cap on a week's pay for the purposes of calculating the basic award and statutory redundancy pay, and the maximum compensatory award for unfair dismissal will increase where the effective date of termination falls on or after 6th April 2024 as follows.

• The limit on a week's pay increases from £643 to £700.
• The maximum compensatory award for unfair dismissal will increase from £105,707 to £115,115.
• The minimum basic award for certain unfair dismissals (including health and safety dismissals) increased from £7,836 to £8,533.

Future changes

These significant changes mean that organisations need to ensure that their policies and procedures are amended as appropriate, and new policies created where necessary. Line managers also need to be trained so they understand how to deal with any requests which may be made under the new or amended legislation. There are also many changes on the horizon that organisations need to prepare for, such as how tips and gratuities are dealt with, the statutory code of practice on "fire and re-hire" and the proactive duty on employers to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace.

For more information contact Catherine Hare in our Employment & HR department via email or phone on 0161 830 8813. Alternatively send any question through to Forbes Solicitors via our online Contact Form.

Learn more about our Employment & HR department here

Overview of the changes to flexible working

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