Statutory Neonatal Care Leave & Pay

You can now create absences for neonatal care leave and if they qualify and make statutory payments – subject to eligibility based on average weekly earnings (AWE) as per legislation laid down in April 2025. 
Neonatal Care is a new absence type that has been delivered and you can use this to create your employee’s SNC absences, and if eligible make the payments too. 
SNC leave is a day one entitlement for the employee.

Accrual of SNC Leave
Parents (birth or adoptive) are entitled to accrue statutory neonatal care leave of up to a maximum of 12 weeks when their baby goes into neonatal care within 28 days of birth.
For each period of 7 consecutive days (including weekends) that the baby is in neonatal care, the employee can accrue 1 full week of SNC leave.  This accrued leave can be requested and taken by the employee within 68 weeks of the baby’s discharge date.

Taking SNC Absence
The accrued leave for SNC can be taken by your employee in whole weeks at a time and get paid if they are entitled to statutory payment for this absence. The leave can be taken anytime within 68 weeks of the discharge date.  Accrued weeks of SNC leave can be taken as follows:

  • Tier 1 – taken in single-week blocks while the child remains in neonatal care

  • Tier 2 – taken as a single continuous block after the Tier 1 window has ended  

Payment for SNC
In order to be entitled to Statutory Neonatal Care payment, the employee’s average weekly earnings (AWE) must b above the LEL – this is the same as all the other parental leave.  SNC Payment is the lower of 90% of AWE and the statutory neonatal care rate (currently the same as the other parental leave rates).

Employers and HR/payroll administrators need to manage and calculate leave and pay obligations arising from neonatal care admissions, ensuring statutory accrual and payment rules are applied correctly and supporting accurate payroll processing.

Legislative Data Context
Two new legislative descriptive flex fields are created for SNC:

  • UK Statutory Neonatal Care – for absence entries
  • UK Statutory Neonatal Care Case – for Case

Case & Absence Data
Two new Absence Context values have been added for Neonatal Care. Use one of these to set up the SNC case.

  • UK Statutory Neonatal Care Adoption Case
  • UK Statutory Neonatal Care Childbirth Case 

The following data can be captured at Case level

  • Relevant Week Override
  • Override Average Weekly Earnings (AWE)
     

Person EIT 
A new Person EIT has been delivered called Neonatal Care Admission Information which will allow you to enter:

  • Neonatal Admission Care Date(s) – Up to 4
  • Neonatal Discharge Date(s)  – Up to 4
  • Child Reference

SNC leave will accrue based on the admission and discharge dates entered on this EIT.
 

Certificates
A new certificate has been delivered for when there is no accrual for payment available.
You can set up your own 
 

Balances
New balances delivered to hold the information required for reporting are as follows:

  • Statutory Parental Bereavement Pay in Northern Ireland due to miscarriage
  • Statutory Parental Bereavement Pay recovered year to date in Northern Ireland
  • NIC compensation on Statutory Parental Bereavement Pay year to date in Northern Ireland

These will be reported via RTI on FPS & EPS where applicable.

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