Empowering employees: New and updated UK employment law effective from April 2024

As the financial year begins in the UK, a number of employment law updates will take effect along with the introduction of newly created legislation. From flexible working rights to support for carers and parents, these acts aim to improve employee rights and enhance their work-life balance.

The updated legislation includes the Employment Rights (Flexible Working) Act 2023 and the Protection from Redundancy (Pregnancy and Family Leave) Act 2023. The Carer’s Leave Act 2023 is a completely new law.

Let’s look at each law in turn and how they will affect both employees and businesses.

Employment Rights (Flexible Working) Act

The employee right to request flexible working was introduced in 2003 in the UK. Working flexibly covers a wide range of work patterns including remote and hybrid working, job share, flexitime, and working during school terms only.

From April 2024, employees will have the right to request flexible working from day one of their employment. Before this change, employees had to work for their employer for 26 consecutive weeks before they could ask to work flexibly.

Other changes to flexible working include:

• the employee right to make two requests for flexible working in any 12 month period, instead of just one request
• the employer must explain their reasons for rejecting a request for flexible working, instead of simply saying no
• the employer response time for a request for flexible working has been shortened from three months to two months

Carer’s Leave Act 2023

The Carer’s Leave Act was created to provide working carers with the right to take unpaid leave for caring purposes. A working carer is defined as an individual who balances paid work with unpaid caring responsibilities. The Carer’s Leave Act provides working carers with the right to one week’s unpaid leave per year to care for family and dependents, such as spouse, civil partner, child, or parent. It also protects the individual’s employment and job benefits, such as pension contributions.

This act received royal assent in May 2023 but won’t take effect until April 2024. Since the original act was introduced, an alteration has been made to allow working carers to request unpaid leave for caring purposes from day one of their employment.

While employers can’t refuse a request for this kind of unpaid leave, they may delay it to ensure sufficient staff cover. Employers may also choose to go beyond the statutory requirement of one week’s unpaid leave and continue to pay the employee during caring leave.

Protection from Redundancy (Pregnancy and Family Leave) Act

This act was an amendment to the Employment Rights Act 1996. Originally, the act protected employees on maternity leave, shared parental leave, or adoption leave from being made redundant. The Protection from Redundancy (Pregnancy and Family Leave) Act has now been extended to offer the same protection to employees who are pregnant or who have recently returned from maternity leave, adoption leave, or shared parental leave. This means that the extended protection from redundancy covers the entire length of the pregnancy and a period of 18 months after the birth or adoption of a child for employees taking maternity leave, adoption leave, or shared parental leave.

What else will change from April 2024?

While the above are the major employment law developments coming into effect from April 2024, you can expect the following changes too.

Paternity leave

The existing paternity leave regulations have been updated to provide more flexibility. For children born or adopted after 6th April 2024, paternity leave can be taken as one week alone, two weeks together, or two separate one week blocks. Previously, the only choice was to take paternity leave in one block.

Increased national minimum wage and living wage

From April 2024, the national minimum wage will rise to the following hourly rates:

• Apprentice hourly rate £6.40
• 16-17 year old hourly rate £6.40
• 18-20 year old hourly rate £8.60
• National living wage (21 and over) hourly rate £11.44

These are minimum statutory hourly rates, but employers are free to pay higher hourly rates if they wish.

Wrapping it up

While employers must take the time to implement the above changes and alter their procedures, it’s also important that employees take note of how each update and new law affects them personally.