Taking parental leave
[ch 7: page 55]The limit on how much parental leave each parent can take in a year is four weeks for each child (unless the employer agrees otherwise).
The parental leave must be taken as whole weeks (for example, one week or two weeks) rather than individual days, again, unless the employer agrees otherwise, or if your child is disabled. It does not have to be taken all at once.
A “week” equals the length of time an employee normally works over seven days. Acas gives the following example:
If an employee works three days a week, one “week” of parental leave equals three days. If an employee works irregular weeks the number of days in a “week” is the total number of days they work a year divided by 52.
In a case about paternity leave, the Court of Appeal decided that an employee who requested one day of parental leave to look after his son and was subsequently disciplined for taking the leave after receiving no response, was not covered by the Parental Leave Regulations. The Court of Appeal decided that since the regulations only gave the right to leave in blocks of a week, his request for one day of leave could not have been made under them (Rodway v South Central Trains [2005] IRLR 583).