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Statutory Parental Bereavement Leave

Updated

An employee may be eligible for Parental Bereavement Leave and Statutory Parental Bereavement Pay (SPBP) if they or their partner either:

  • has a child who has died under 18 years old
  • had a stillbirth after 24 weeks of pregnancy

The death or stillbirth must have happened on or after 6 April 2020.

To qualify for Parental Bereavement Leave and Statutory Parental Bereavement Pay, an employee must meet the criteria both as a parent (including if they had day to day responsibility) and an employee. They might not be eligible for both.

Click here for full details of eligibility.

 

Statutory Parental Bereavement Pay

Statutory Parental Bereavement Pay for an eligible employee is either £151.97 a week or 90% of their average weekly earnings (whichever is lower). Tax and National Insurance need to be deducted.

To Pay SPBL

  1. Log into your Payroll platform and navigate to the relevant Employees Details.
  2. Select Statutory Payments.
  3. You then need to click the Add button on the top right of the page which will allow you to select SPBL from the dropdown menu.
  4. Enter the start date of the leave and then the child death date and the system will automatically check if the employee is eligible for SPBL.

Helpful Hint

For employees in Northern Ireland, please make sure you select "is this person employed in Northern Ireland?". You are then also asked the further question if this loss is due to a miscarriage

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  1. The screen will now show you the weeks payable and how many weeks have already been paid. There is also a tick box if you would like to offset the SPBP payment against the employee's normal salary.
  2. The system shows the leave as consecutive weeks however the employee does not need to take the leave consecutively.
  3. Select advanced settings for the option to add attachments if needed and also to keep notes.

You can also:

  • Set employer pension protection - Any figure here will override the employer pension amount in the pay run.
  • Do not pay - Yo can select the reason not to pay, this will then provide a link to complete a SPBP1 form to give to your employee.
  • Pay lump sum - will pay amount as one lump sum.
  • SPBP adjust - Can be used to apply any adjustment to the SPBP, useful is a backdated pay rise has affected the entitlement.
  • HMRC Advance Funding: If you have received an advance for the statutory payment from HMRC, enter that here. It will then be added to the P32 Report each month until fully repaid.

Helpful Hint

If you choose the 'do not pay' option and select a reason from the list that will appear and then 'save', it will create a document.  The document can be accessed by going in to the 'Employee's Details' > 'Statutory Payments' and then under the Statutory Parental Bereavement section you will see the status is on DNP in a red box and then if you click on the paper clip icon you will be taken to the HMRC site, where you will fill in the details asked for.  This will then create a form for the employer to give to the employee.

  1. Click Save in the bottom right hand corner.

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Paying SPBP within the pay run

You can pay SPBP by following these steps:

  1. Run your pay run making sure you have included the person who will be having the SPBP.
  2. Once the pay run is complete, if you look in your warnings it will highlight that the employee has a statutory payment applied (please note this only applies if the employee is having consecutive leave weeks or on the first week of a split leave application). 
  3. Click into the employees details and you will see that the Statutory Parental Bereavement Pay has been added.
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  4. When you click on the red box with pencil icon a side panel will appear. This example assumes that the employee wants to take the leave on consecutive weeks, if this was not the case you can untick one of the boxes in the 'Include' column which would then move that week into the 'Add payments' option and if you choose not to pay this is under the 'Advanced settings' option.  Click on the 'Save' button to save the options you have chosen. 
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  5. If the employee has decided to split the weeks Statutory Parental Bereavement Leave between different pay runs then when you come to run the second pay run the leave has to be entered manually.
  6. When you run the second pay run and then go into the employees details you will see that there is no payment for Statutory Parental Bereavement Pay. So to apply the leave manually you have to click on the 'Actions' button and then select 'Pay Statutory Leave' 
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  7. Once you have selected 'Pay Statutory Leave' choose the 'Statutory Parental Bereavement Leave' option from the menu provided which will take you to the following screen: 
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  8. When you click on the 'Add payments' option you will see the 2nd week of SPBL place a tick in the 'include' tick box and then click on the 'Save' button.  The second week of the leave will now be included in that pay run.
  9. When someone has been fully paid the leave due it will appear like this in the employee's section: 
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Reporting

For Reporting purposes once you go back into the 'employee's details' and choose 'Statutory Payments' from the menu it will show under the 'Statutory Parental Bereavement Pay' all the details which can then either be downloaded to PDF or you can Publish to employee profile:

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    When you run a P32 report from 'Reports' > 'HMRC Reporting' > 'P32 Report' and run the report for the financial year of interest, under the 'NI Deductions Summary' tab you will see a section for 'Statutory Parental Bereavement Pay':

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