This week is Carers Week, an annual campaign to raise awareness of and recognise unpaid carers, many of whom are balancing caring responsibilities alongside employment. This year’s theme is Building Carer Friendly Communities.
With this in mind, we look at the statutory right to take unpaid carer’s leave to help you support your people and empower your managers when it comes to dealing with requests for such leave.
So, what does your business need to know?
- What is the right?
- Who can take it?
- How is it taken?
- Can an employer postpone carer’s leave?
- Can an employee be dismissed for requesting carer’s leave?
1. What is the right?
Carer’s leave is a day one right that enables a qualifying employee to take one week’s unpaid leave to provide or arrange care in each rolling 12-month period.
2. Who can take it?
It can be taken by an employee who has a dependant with a long-term care need.
Someone is a dependant for the purposes of carer’s leave if they are a spouse, civil partner, child or parent of the employee or they live in the same household as the employee (and they are not their boarder, lodger or tenant) and they reasonably rely on the employee to provide or arrange care.
A dependant has a long-term care need if they have an illness or injury (whether physical or mental) that requires, or is likely to require, care for more than three months or they have a disability for the purposes of the Equality Act 2010 or they require care for a reason connected with their old age.
3. How is it taken?
Carer’s leave may be taken in either individual days or half days, up to a block of one working week for that employee. The leave does not need to be used on consecutive days.
It can be helpful to know that if an employee has more than one dependant who has a long-term care need, they can use their week of carer’s leave to support different dependants.
If an employee wishes to take carer’s leave, they should usually give you notice of this. Notice is either twice as many days’ notice as the period of leave the employee is requesting, or three days, whichever is the longest.
4. Can an employer postpone carer’s leave?
Businesses can in certain circumstances postpone an employee’s requested carer’s leave.
If you are thinking about postponing it, remember that you must be able to show you reasonably believe the business would be seriously affected if the employee took the leave at the time they asked for. Bear in mind, the leave cannot be refused – only postponed and the law sets out steps that you will need to take if you do need to postpone, including around timing.
It is important to get this right, so if you are considering postponing a period of carer’s leave in your business, please get in touch for advice before acting, and do so as soon as possible as timescales for postponement can be tight.
5. Can an employee be dismissed for requesting carer’s leave?
Not safely, it is automatically unfair to dismiss an employee in connection with carer’s leave. Even short serving employees have this protection.
Employee’s also have protection from being subject to a detriment, such as disciplinary action or denial of promotion, because they have taken, or sought to take or made use of the benefits of carer’s leave or because you thought they would.
If you receive a request for carer’s leave or you need further information on this area, please get in touch.