Statutory Neonatal Leave and Pay

Modified on Fri, 21 Mar at 4:51 PM

Processing Neonatal Pay

As of 6 April 2025, the UK will implement the Neonatal Care (Leave and Pay) Act 2023, introducing statutory rights for eligible employees to take up to 12 weeks of neonatal care leave and receive statutory neonatal care pay (SNCP). This legislation supports parents whose babies require specialist neonatal care, ensuring they can take necessary time off without financial strain.

Eligibility Criteria:

Neonatal Care Leave: Available from the first day of employment, employees can take leave if their baby is admitted to neonatal care within 28 days of birth and remains in hospital for seven consecutive days or more.
Statutory Neonatal Care Pay (SNCP): To qualify, employees must have at least 26 weeks of continuous service and earn at least the lower earnings limit.

If your employee is on Maternity Leave or Adoption Leave whilst the child is in neonatal care, the Statutory Neonatal Leave must be taken after the Maternity Leave or Adoption Leave because they cannot be stopped once they are started. Other types of parental leave (e.g Shared Parental Leave or Paternity Leave) can be taken before or after Neonatal Care Leave.

Statutory Neonatal Care Pay is a weekly payment. It lasts for 1 to 12 complete weeks.

Tier One leave, is when your employee is taking Statutory Neonatal Care Leave while their child is in neonatal care or in the first week following their discharge. This leave may be taken as soon as accrued when care is still ongoing, and the employee needs to be with the child. They can take Tier One leave in an unlimited number of blocks allowing flexibility for them to start or stop work at short notice on a number of occasions to be with their child in neonatal care or to support their partner while caring for the child. Each block of leave must last at least one continuous week.

Tier Two Leave is taken at any period outside of Tier One period. This is a period when the child is no longer receiving neonatal care. This is most likely to apply if the employee has accrued Neonatal Care Leave while on Maternity Leave, Adoption Leave or other parental leave and needs to take the Neonatal Care Leave later. This leave must be taken in one continuous period of consecutive weeks.

To create a Neonatal calendar event

Once your payroll has been opened into tax year 2025/2026, Parental Neonatal Leave will become available as an option in the Cintra IQ calendar.

Navigate to the employee's Calendar window.
Go to Cintra iQ: Employment Record> Forms> Calendar
Click New Calendar Event and select Parental Neonatal Leave and enter the dates of leave (in blocks of 7 days)

To complete the Neonatal leave details and create payment

Once you have created a Neonatal leave record in the calendar, you can complete the required additional details under parental payments, and calculate the payment.

Navigate to the employee's Parental Payments window.
Go to Cintra iQ: Employment record> Forms> Parental payments.
Select the Neonatal pay tab.
Open the record to enter the required details of the expected date of birth

If the leave occurs in the current payroll period, then calculate the payslip and any SNCP payment due will appear in the payslip.

If you are entering the record in advance of the current payroll, you can click on the SNCP weeks button to calculate and view the payments in advance.