Unpaid parental leave becomes a day-one right for employees under the Employment Rights Act 2025. That means the old one-year service requirement is being removed.
Employees who are eligible for parental leave will be able to access it from their first day of employment instead of having to build up a qualifying period first.
For employers, this is one of those updates that sounds small until you think about what it changes in practice.
New starters may now be able to request unpaid parental leave much earlier than before. If your policies, handbooks or manager guidance still refer to the old rules, they will need updating this month.
What is unpaid parental leave?
Unpaid parental leave, sometimes called ordinary parental leave, is separate from maternity leave, statutory paternity leave and shared parental leave. It gives eligible parents unpaid time off work to look after their child.
Acas says each parent can take up to 18 weeks of parental leave for each child up until the child turns 18, with a maximum of 4 weeks a year for each child in most cases.
It is usually taken in blocks of weeks, although different rules can apply where a child is disabled.
So this is not a brand-new type of family leave. The entitlement already exists. What is changing from April 2026 is when employees become eligible for it.
What is changing this April?
The key change is straightforward. From 6 April 2026, unpaid parental leave becomes available from the employee’s first day of employment. The old one-year qualifying period is going.
Employees who become newly eligible because of this change have also been able to give notice from 18 February 2026 for leave they want to take on or after 6 April. The normal notice period for parental leave remains 21 days.
That matters because this is not just a legal tidy-up. It changes how employers deal with new starters who already have caring responsibilities. Someone can now move jobs without losing access to unpaid parental leave in the process. Government said in January that this reform could give around 1.5 million parents more flexibility to share caring responsibilities.
What does this mean for employers?
In simple terms, leave entitlements are widening earlier in the employment relationship.
Before April 2026, a business could rely on the fact that unpaid parental leave was not available until an employee had completed a year of service.
From now on, that fallback disappears. If an employee meets the wider eligibility criteria, including having parental responsibility for a child, they may be eligible from day one.
That does not mean employers lose all control. Acas state that employers cannot refuse or completely cancel parental leave, but they may be able to postpone it for up to 6 months if the timing would cause significant disruption to the business, provided they follow the correct process. There are limits to that, and employers cannot postpone leave in every situation.
So the practical issue is less about whether the right exists and more about whether your business is ready to manage requests properly.
What should employers review now?
First, check your family leave policies. If they still say unpaid parental leave needs one year of service, they are out of date.
Second, review your manager guidance. Managers do not need a lecture on the Employment Rights Act 1996 or the Employment Rights Act 2025. They just need to know what has changed, what notice periods apply, and when they can and cannot postpone leave.
Third, sense-check your HR processes. New starters may raise family leave questions earlier than before, especially where paternity and parental leave are being considered alongside each other.
Since paternity and parental leave are both becoming day-one rights from April, employers need to be clear on the difference between them and how they interact with other leave types, including shared parental leave.
Don’t overcomplicate it
This is not one to overcomplicate. Unpaid parental leave is not new. The day-one right is.
If your business updates its policies, briefs managers properly and keeps its messaging clear, this should be easily manageable. If not, it is exactly the sort of change that creates confusion for HR, line managers and employees.
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