Statutory Parental Bereavement Pay (General) Regulations 2020

The Statutory Parental Bereavement Pay (General) Regulations 2020 implement a new entitlement for bereaved parents who meet certain eligibility criteria to receive a statutory payment while absent from work in England, Scotland, and Wales. The regulations:

• set out the types of relationships with a child which qualify someone for entitlement when the child dies. This includes a child’s legal parents (whether they are natural or adoptive parents)
• set out how many weeks of statutory parental bereavement pay are available to a bereaved parent
• set the qualifying period, within which statutory parental bereavement pay is payable
• allow pay to be claimed for a single consecutive period, or for two non-consecutive blocks of a week each
• detail what notices and information the bereaved parent must provide.
• provide that certain individuals are, or are not, to be regarded as ‘employees’ for the purposes of the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992 (SSCBA 1992)
• ensure that certain weeks in which an employee is absent from work, without a contract of service which continues during that absence, nevertheless count towards the requirement of 26 weeks’ continuous employment
• continue employment when the identity of an employer changes
• set out when two or more employers should be treated as a single employer
• provide for two or more contracts of service with a single employer to be treated as a single contract of service
• set the weekly rate of payment
• set out when contractual and statutory rights to parental bereavement pay can be set off against each other
• provide that an employer who deliberately dismisses a parent in order to avoid liability for pay remains liable
• allow payments to be made in the same way as remuneration, but excludes the possibility of payments in kind
• set out when payment must be made after a determination has been issued by an officer of Revenue and Customs
• set out the circumstances in which liability to make payments shifts to the HMRC
• make provision for when those payments are to be made

Statutory Parental Bereavement Pay (General) Regulations 2020 come into force on the day after the day on which these Regulations are made.

Source: LexisNexis

Draft regulations can be downloaded from here