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Introduction to this document

Change of adoption leave request

Employees who are proposing to adopt a child and who have selected an adoption leave start date have the statutory right to subsequently vary their selected date.

A change of date

If, having given you notification of their adoption leave plans using our Adoption Leave Request Form, an employee subsequently wants to vary the start date of their adoption leave, they must give you a minimum of 28 days’ notice and that notice must be in writing if you so request. If it’s not reasonably practicable for them to give the required 28 days’ notice, they must give notice as soon as is reasonably practicable. Where the variation is to enable the employee’s adoption leave to now begin on the date on which the child is actually placed with them for adoption, they must give you at least 28 days’ notice before the date they specified in their original adoption leave request form as the date on which they expected the child to be placed with them for adoption. Where the variation is to enable the employee’s adoption leave to now begin on a predetermined date, or a different predetermined date, they must give you at least 28 days’ notice before that date. If the employee fails to give you sufficient notice, you can still choose to accept the new start date if you wish, but you aren’t obliged to do so (unless it wasn’t reasonably practicable for them to give you 28 days’ notice and they gave notice as soon as it was).

Change form

Our Change of Adoption Leave Request form is a straightforward way of enabling the employee to comply with the statutory requirements. It asks them to complete the details of the expected date of placement of the child for adoption, their original chosen adoption leave start date and their new chosen start date (including whether that’s to now be on the date on which the child is placed with them for adoption). They then need to sign and date the form and return it to their line manager. The reason the expected date of placement of the child for adoption is required is that, assuming the employee hasn’t chosen to begin their adoption leave on the actual date on which the child is placed with them for adoption but on a particular predetermined date, that predetermined date can’t be any earlier than 14 days before the date on which the child is expected to be placed and it also can’t be any later than that expected date of placement.

Your reply

Once the employee has submitted this form to you, you must then write to them again within 28 days of the date on which their adoption leave commences to notify them of the new date on which their period of adoption leave will now end. You can use our Letter Notifying Change to Adoption Leave Dates to do this. If you fail to do so, you’ll lose the right to postpone the employee’s return if they fail to give the required eight weeks’ notice if they want to return to work early, i.e. before the end of their adoption leave period.