Contractual issues

Contractual issues during neonatal care leave

Your contract of employment continues throughout your leave unless either you or your employer lawfully ends it, or it expires (such as if it's a fixed-term contract).

Terms and conditions during neonatal care leave

During your leave, you have a statutory right to continue to benefit from all the terms and conditions of employment that would have applied to you had you been at work, except for the terms relating to pay.

Examples of contractual terms and conditions that continue during neonatal care leave include:

• Gym membership
• Participation in share schemes
• Reimbursement of professional subscriptions
• The use of a company car or mobile phone (unless provided for business use only)

Continuous employment and neonatal care leave

Neonatal care leave counts towards your period of continuous employment for the purposes of entitlement to other statutory employment rights, e.g. the right to a redundancy payment and any contractual rights, such as benefits that depend on length-of-service.

Accrual of annual leave

You continue to accrue statutory - and any contractual - annual leave entitlement throughout neonatal care leave.

You can't take annual leave during neonatal care leave - but can take it immediately before or after it. You can carry over any untaken leave into the next holiday year, but it must be used by the end of that holiday year.

Contributions to a workplace pension scheme

Your employer must maintain their usual contributions to your pension during neonatal care leave, which must not be reduced if you receive statutory neonatal care pay (SNCP).

You must continue to pay your pension contributions if the pension scheme rules require you to do so (these can be reduced when receiving SNCP). You won't have to make any contributions towards your pension when you're not receiving SNCP. However, you can still make voluntary contributions if the pension scheme rules allow you to.

Returning to work from neonatal care leave

You have the right return to a job with the same seniority, pension rights and similar rights. You will also have the right to return to a job with the same terms and conditions (including remuneration) that are as favourable as they would have been if you had not gone on leave.

Following neonatal care leave, you will be entitled to return to the same job that you had before taking the leave if you:

• only took neonatal care leave; or
• took no more than 4 weeks of parental leave; or
• took neonatal care leave after another period of statutory family leave taken for the same child (except parental leave) and the total leave taken was 26 weeks or less.

If you return to work after taking a period of leave that doesn't comply with the above, you'll still have a right to return to the same job, unless your employer cannot reasonably give it back to you.

If so, you'll have the right to return to another job that is both suitable and appropriate for you to do. This must be as close as possible to the previous role you had, and include the same remuneration, seniority, status and terms and conditions of employment (i.e. you should be treated as if you had not been absent).

You are also entitled to benefit from any general improvements to the rate of pay or other terms and conditions introduced while you were away.