Letter confirming entitlement to SPL

Following receipt of a notice of entitlement to shared parental leave, it’s worth writing to the employee to confirm their entitlement and to outline the legal position if they wish to vary how much leave they intend to take.

Notice of entitlement

Where a mother or primary adopter volunteers to end their maternity or adoption leave early, either by giving eight weeks’ notice of an early return and then returning to work early or by serving a leave curtailment notice, the shared parental leave (SPL) scheme enables the balance of their untaken leave and pay to be shared between them and the other parent, up to a maximum of 50 weeks’ SPL and 37 weeks’ statutory shared parental pay (ShPP), subject to satisfying the eligibility criteria. If both parents want to take SPL, they’ll each need to submit a written notice of entitlement to their respective employers at least eight weeks before the start date chosen by them for their first period of SPL. As the notice of entitlement must contain a great deal of specified information and signed declarations from both parents, to avoid confusion it’s better to have one notice for mothers/adopters to complete (see our Notice of Entitlement to SPL - Mother or Adopter) and one for their partners to complete (see our Notice of Entitlement to SPL - Father or Partner). As well as setting out your employee’s entitlement to take SPL and receive ShPP, in the notice they must also include details of: (1) how much SPL each parent intends to take (and how many weeks of ShPP they each intend to claim); and (2) a non-binding indication as to when your employee intends to take SPL and claim ShPP (including the start and end dates for each period of leave and pay). Our Letter Confirming Entitlement to SPL is intended to be sent to your employee once you’ve received their notice of entitlement to SPL and it confirms that, based on the information they’ve provided in that notice, they’re entitled to take SPL. It then recites the particular details set out above relating to how much SPL the parents each intend to take and when your employee intends to take their SPL, and you can take this information directly from their notice.

Varying a notice of entitlement

Although the indication of when your employee intends to take SPL and claim ShPP isn’t binding until they’ve submitted a period of leave notice specifying the start and end dates for each period of SPL requested (see our Period of Leave Notice for Shared Parental Leave), if the parents subsequently wish to vary how much SPL they each intend to take (and how many weeks of ShPP they each intend to claim), as set out in their notice of entitlement to SPL, your employee must give you written notice of this. That written notice must contain: (1) details of the SPL/ShPP variation; (2) an indication as to when your employee intends to take SPL and claim ShPP (including the start and end dates for each period of leave and pay) - this indication is again non-binding; (3) what periods of SPL and ShPP have already been notified by the parents through the submission of one or more periods of leave notice (or notices to vary SPL); and (4) a declaration signed by both parents that they agree the variation. Therefore, our letter goes on to set this position out. Note that there’s no limit on the number of variation notices that an employee can give under this provision, so they can keep changing their mind about how much SPL they and their partner each want to take.