What is Bereavement Leave in England and Wales?

As an employer, you must prepare for challenging situations your employees may face which will affect their ability to work. One such situation is when your employee faces the death of a loved one. Not all your employees will deal with this situation in the same way, so you must be sensitive to their needs and treat your employees as individuals when they face a death whilst ensuring you do not discriminate. Furthermore, you have legal obligations, such as offering bereavement leave when your employee faces the loss of a dependant. This article will explain bereavement leave, including what it is, your payment requirements, and information on other relevant leave policies.

What is Bereavement Leave?

Bereavement leave is time your employee will take off work due to the death of a dependent. As an employer, you must grant this to your employees. Many refer to bereavement leave as compassionate leave, or where you offer pay during it, special paid leave.

Therefore, an employee can take this leave where their child under the age of 18 dies or is stillborn after 24 weeks of pregnancy or miscarriage. Many refer to this as statutory parental bereavement leave. This is an entitlement for employees, but not workers. However, workers may be allowed to take paid time off.

Where your employee faces the death of a loved one who is not a dependent, there is no legal requirement for you to allow them to take bereavement leave. Furthermore, there is no legal entitlement when a miscarriage happens before 24 weeks. Nonetheless, it is good practice to offer your employee time off depending on the individual circumstances.

How Long is Bereavement Leave?

There are no legal requirements regarding the amount of time your employee takes for bereavement leave. However, the amount granted should be reasonable, including time to attend the funeral, and should take into account unexpected issues and emergencies. As previously mentioned, you are not obliged to give your employee leave to attend the funeral of someone who is not a dependent. However, you may choose to give time off at your discretion.

Where your employee takes statutory parental bereavement leave in response to a stillborn after 24 weeks of pregnancy or a miscarriage, they should take it after their statutory right to maternity or paternity leave. The entitlement to the latter is 52 weeks maternity leave for the birth parent and two weeks paternity leave for the partner or father of the birth parent. Both have the right to take parental bereavement leave. However, they must take it within 56 weeks of the date of the child’s death.

Is Bereavement Leave Paid for?

There is no legal requirement for you to pay your employee for this leave. It is at your discretion, and it is good practice to make this clear in your workplace policies. You may decide to allow the time off to be taken as a holiday, sick or annual leave. If you decide to pay, you should offer the regular pay associated with each of these. However, if your employees work in the agricultural sector, there are some exceptions. 

Statutory Parental Bereavement Pay

Where your employee takes statutory parental bereavement leave, they have the right to take it as paid leave. Whilst your workers are not legally entitled to take statutory parental bereavement leave, they may be entitled to the statutory parental bereavement pay. 

Statutory parental bereavement pay is at least two weeks paid leave and is either £151.97 per week or 90% of your employee’s average weekly wage, depending upon which is lower. You must pay this even if you are no longer trading.

Your employee can take statutory parental bereavement pay where they are either the:

• biological parent;
• adoptive parent living with the child;
• person who was responsible for the child and living with them for a minimum of four weeks before their death;
• person who intended to become the parent of the child through surrogacy; or
• partner of the child’s parent where they lived with both in an enduring family relationship.

The child must have died between 24 weeks of pregnancy and 18 years of age, and the employee or worker must also:

• be employed at the time of the death of their child;
• have worked for you for a minimum of 26 weeks from the Saturday before the death of their child; and
• earn £120 on average per week before tax.

What is a Bereavement Policy?

It is good practice for your business to have a bereavement policy. This will make it clear to your employees what you allow for when they face grief. It could contain:

• when your employee may or may not take this leave;
• the amount of leave they may take and whether this is more than the statutory entitlement;
• whether you might extend the leave where needed;
• the pay offered, if at all when taking this leave; 
• where an employee is not entitled to bereavement leave, the other options for the type of leave they may take instead; and 
• how you intend to support your employees through the grief process.

Key Takeaways

When your employees face the death of a loved one, you must handle this carefully and sensitively. Where the person who has died depended on the employee, you must legally offer them a reasonable amount of time off as bereavement leave to manage their grief. You must be clear of the rules about bereavement leave.

If you need help with understanding bereavement leave in England and Wales, our experienced employment lawyers can assist as part of our LegalVision membership. For a low monthly fee, you will have unlimited access to lawyers to answer your questions and draft and review your documents for a low monthly fee. So call us today on 0808 196 8584 or visit our membership page.

Frequently Asked Questions