Staff Parental Leave Policy

1. Purpose
This policy is intended to provide guidance on your statutory entitlement to parental leave. Note that this should not be confused with paternity leave, which is dealt with in the College’s Paternity Leave and Pay Policy.

2. Conditions
If you have parental responsibility for a child born or adopted on or after 15 December 1994 and you have been continuously employed by the College for a year or more, you are entitled to a period of parental leave.

3. Entitlement
Your entitlement to parental leave shall be no more than 13 weeks per child or 18 weeks for a disabled child and will lapse on the occurrence of either of the following:

• when your child attains the age of 5; or
• in the case of an adopted child, the child’s 18th birthday or if sooner, five years from the date of adoption; or
• in the case of a child who is in receipt of Disability Living Allowance, the child’s 18th birthday.

4. Request
To request parental leave you should complete the Request for Parental Leave form and hand it to the Director of Studies not less than 21 days before the leave period is required. Leave can only be taken as whole weeks and any fraction of a week will be treated as a whole week except where leave is required to care for a child who is in receipt of Disability Living Allowance.

5. Postponement
The College reserves the right to postpone any request for parental leave for up to six months if it is considered that the operation of the College would be unduly disrupted by the requested leave. In such circumstances you will be given notice of this within seven days of your initial request for the leave. This paragraph will not apply in cases where the parental leave is requested from the day of the child’s birth or adoption.

6. Length of leave
You may not take more than four weeks parental leave per child in any one calendar year.

7. Unpaid leave
The period of any leave under this policy will be unpaid.

8. Return to work
For periods of leave of four weeks or less you can expect to return to the same position within the College that you were in prior to the leave period. However, for longer periods of leave, whilst every effort will be made to accommodate you in the same position, if this is not practicable a similar position on no less favourable terms and conditions will be offered.