Summary of the employment law changes from April 2024

Legal updates are like buses, nothing happens for years, and then they all come along at once! As an employer, staying up to date with changes in employment law is crucial. You will need to make sure your HR policies reflect these changes and your working practices do as well.

But this isn’t just about compliance. It is also about showing your people how committed you are to creating a great place to work helping you to retain your team and attract the very best candidates when you recruit. 

In this blog we will summarise all the changes happening in April 2024 and look at how you may need to prepare. 

1. Carers leave

Supporting carers in your workplace is not only the right thing to do but also makes good business sense by improving recruitment and retention.

From 6th April 2024, employees who care for a dependant with a long-term care need will be entitled to one week of flexible unpaid leave per year.  All employees will have the new entitlement to carer’s leave no matter how long they have worked for their employer (a day 1 right).

Employees have to give a minimum amount of notice of either double the amount of time they’ve requested to take off, or three days, whichever is longer. You cannot refuse a carer’s leave request, but you can postpone it if it would seriously disrupt your operations. 

2. Flexible Working requests

From 6th April 2024, the right to request flexible working will be a day-one right, rather than after 26 weeks of continuous service as before. This means millions more employees will have the right to make a statutory flexible working request.

Currently, employees can make one statutory request in 12 months, which will increase to two in April.

Both of these changes mean a likely increase in requests from employees.  With a new requirement to consult with employees and a reduced timescale of 2 months to make a decision, employers should take steps to prepare for April.

3. Paternity leave

Paternity leave allows an employee to spend up to 2 weeks with a new child and support their partner. 

There are no changes to the amount of paternity leave available or statutory paternity pay (although there is the usual annual increase, see below).  

The changes aim to increase flexibility around taking paternity leave by reducing the notice period, extending the window to take paternity leave and giving more flexibility on how to take leave.

This applies where the expected date of birth or placement for adoption is on or after 6th April 2024

4. Extended Protection from Redundancy for (some) Family Leave

Employees on maternity leave, shared parental leave (for a defined period) and adoption leave already benefit from more rights and protection against redundancy than other employees. 

From 6th April 2024, this protection will be extended beyond the family leave and will include pregnancy. 

To prepare for this, we advise detailed record keeping when someone informs you that they are pregnant and for all dates of the start and end of family leave.

As the new rules are quite detailed, we suggest you seek advice before taking action in a redundancy situation.

5. Changes to holiday entitlement, carry forward and pay calculations

A lot is going on with holidays from April 2024. Most notable is the change to calculating holiday accrual for irregular hours and part-year workers which starts for leave years starting on or after 1st April 2024 (so if you have a January leave year that will be 1st January 2025). 

Employers will be able to use the 12.07% method and apply rolled-up holiday pay again but only to this specific group of staff.

Best practices around the carry-over of holidays have been put into legislation.  This means clear rules around carrying forward holidays if employees have been on family leave, long-term sickness, or have been unable to take their leave.

And finally, rules around “normal” pay when calculating holiday pay, which are already best practice based on EU case law, will be confirmed in UK legislation.  This means that holiday pay must include commission, regular overtime and some other pay elements.  The calculation means that when an employee takes a holiday, they do not see a reduction in their pay.

6. National living wage and National Minimum Wage

The National Living Wage has been extended to apply to workers 21 and above (previously the National Living Wage only applied to those aged 23 and over) along with an increase to all rates. 

From 1st April 2024 the changes are:

• A £1.02 (or 9.8%) increase to the National Living Wage for those aged 21 and over. This rises from £10.42 to £11.44 per hour.

• A £1.11 (or 14.8%) increase to the National Minimum Wage for those aged 18-20. This rises from £7.49 to £8.60 per hour.

• A £1.12 (or 21.2%), increase to the National Minimum Wage for those aged 16-17 and apprentices. This rises from £5.28 to £6.40 per hour.

7. Statutory rate rises

There will be the usual statutory rate rises

• Statutory maternity pay, statutory adoption pay, statutory paternity pay, statutory shared parental pay and statutory parental bereavement pay will rise to £184.03 per week from 7th April 2024.

• Statutory sick pay will rise to £116.75 (from £109.40) from 6th April 2024.

What should you do?

• Review your HR policies and procedures 

You’ll need to ensure all of your HR policies and procedures and contract are updated to reflect these changes to make sure everyone is aware. You may also need to provide some training to your managers to ensure they are aware of the changes and are equipped to handle any issues that arise. 

• Review your hourly rates for staff on minimum wage

Ensure everyone paid on or around minimum wage is awarded the increases to keep your pay in line with these changes and ensure their contracts are updated accordingly. 

How can we help?

This is a very big update compared to what has come in previous years, so we understand this can feel daunting to ensure you make the required changes. 

If you are already working with us then we will be in contact to support you with these changes. 

However, if you are not already working with us then we can help in three ways:

• You can purchase policies directly from our website. These are template policies that are written in a simple way and can be adapted to suit your organisation. If you would like to ensure you have a legally up-to-date compliant policy then this is a cost-effective quick way of achieving that.

• We also have the option of purchasing pay as you go time should you have any questions or concerns about what you need to do to prepare for these updates or for anything else HR you’d like to ask us.

• If you would like policies written specifically to suit your organisation or would like your existing policies updated for these changes then please get in touch and we can arrange to complete this for you.

At Bluestone HR we offer a truly personalised approach to HR services. Every organisation is different and that is why we provide a personal tailored service to all our clients. Our experienced team will bring a practical approach to help you look after the most important tool in your organisation, the people that work for you. If you would like to have a no obligation chat about how we may be able to support your organisation get in touch.