Bereavement and Pregnancy Loss Leave to be introduced from April 2027

The government recently confirmed its intention to roll out new forms of bereavement and pregnancy loss leave from April 2027 and has published further details of some of the policy decisions it has made in connection with these new rights. This article explores what we currently know about the scope of the new rights and how they interact with the existing right to parental bereavement leave and pay.

Current legal position: parental bereavement leave and pay

Parental bereavement leave is currently the only statutory entitlement employees have to take a period of leave following a bereavement. This allows eligible employed parents, who have suffered the death of a child under 18, or a stillbirth after the end of the 24th week of pregnancy, to take up to a maximum of two weeks' parental bereavement leave, in blocks of at least one week, within 56 weeks from the child's or baby's death. If the employee has at least 26 weeks’ continuous service and meets minimum earnings limits, they will also be entitled to statutory parental bereavement pay.

For all other bereavements and pregnancy losses, the employee will only be entitled to take paid or unpaid time off if the employer offers this on a compassionate leave basis.

Employment Rights Act 2025: introduction of bereavement and pregnancy loss leave

The Employment Rights Act 2025 creates new day-one rights to unpaid bereavement leave or pregnancy loss leave. While the Act creates the basic framework, regulations will flesh out the finer details of these new leave entitlements and this left gaps in our understanding. However, within its recently published consultation response, the government has confirmed some of the key policy decisions it has made in connection with these new rights enabling us to fill in some of those gaps and sketch out a far clearer picture of how the new rights will operate in practice, and how they interact with the existing parental bereavement leave and pay regime.

Bereavement leave

Eligible employees will be entitled to two weeks’ unpaid bereavement leave (prorated to represent the employee’s usual working pattern). Bereavement leave can be taken discontinuously (in units of one or more days), at any point within a time window which starts from either the date of death / date of knowledge of the death and ends 56 weeks after the date of death, or knowledge of the death.

Bereavement leave will be available in relation to the death of immediate family members (biological, adopted, step, and half-relations), including spouses, civil partners and partners in a committed long-term relationship (cohabiting or non-cohabiting), parents, adult children, and siblings. It will also apply to equivalent parental relationships for those raised in kinship and foster care arrangements.

Pregnancy loss leave

Eligible employees will be entitled to two weeks’ unpaid pregnancy loss leave (prorated to represent the employee’s usual working pattern), which can start on either the date of pregnancy loss or the date of knowledge of the pregnancy loss. Pregnancy loss leave can be taken discontinuously (in units of one or more days), at any point within a time window which starts from either the date of pregnancy loss / date of knowledge of the pregnancy loss and ends 56 weeks after the pregnancy loss, or knowledge of the pregnancy loss.

All types of pregnancy loss before 24 weeks will be within scope, including all types of miscarriage before 24 weeks including molar pregnancies, ectopic pregnancies, and chemical pregnancies (non-exhaustive), all terminations and IVF embryo transfer loss (meaning the unsuccessful outcome of transferring a fertilised embryo into the uterus during IVF treatment). This does not include IVF embryo loss pre-transfer. As several IVF cycles can be undertaken in a year, it is not yet clear whether employees will be entitled to pregnancy loss leave in relation to each subsequent IVF embryo transfer loss (although we presume so). If so, each embryo transfer loss will have its own 56-week window to use the leave and this may prove challenging for employers to manage in practical terms, making good record keeping essential.

Pregnancy loss leave will be available to the person who was pregnant, their spouse, civil partner, the other parent, or a partner (who is in a committed long-term relationship) with the person who physically experienced the pregnancy loss, an intended co-parent or intended parents in a surrogacy arrangement.

Rules applying to both bereavement and pregnancy loss leave

There are several principles which will apply equally to bereavement and pregnancy loss leave:

• For leave taken within the first eight weeks of the bereavement / pregnancy loss, the employee must give notice before the employee starts work on the day they intend to take leave, or as soon as is reasonably possible thereafter.

• For leave taken beyond 8 weeks post bereavement / pregnancy loss, one week of notice is required before the requested date of leave.

• Any/all forms of notice are acceptable (including informal messages via text, WhatsApp).

• Employees will not have to provide any evidence of a bereavement / pregnancy loss to their employer to be able to access leave.

What will the bereavement leave pathways look like from April 2027?

These new forms of bereavement and pregnancy loss leave will sit alongside the existing parental bereavement leave regime. We have created a flow chart to clearly illustrate how the new pathways will interact with each other. 

Next steps

The new statutory rights to bereavement and pregnancy loss leave merely set the minimum benchmark. Many employers will choose to voluntarily enhance these rights as part of their wider employee benefits package, for example:

• providing paid leave for family bereavements and pregnancy loss

• granting a longer / more flexible compassionate leave entitlement

• offering compassionate leave in a wider range of circumstances, or

• allowing managers flexibility to exercise their judgment to grant compassionate leave in situations where a particular bereavement does not quite ‘fit’ the strict criteria but is equally traumatic (e.g. the death of a very close personal friend, or of a neighbour that has acted as a ‘substitute’ parent).

Employers should start thinking about how they will implement these new forms of leave from April 2027 (specific date TBC). To help them prepare, employers should consider:

• conducting an audit of any current arrangements for handling pregnancy loss and bereavements

• assessing how any current polices compare to the new regime.

• For example, if, as is relatively common, a compassionate leave policy allows a few days’ paid leave for bereavements:

  • Will the list of relatives considered ‘in scope’ need to be amended?

  • Will the remaining days leave be offered only on an unpaid basis? Or will they be paid?

  • Does the time when the leave can be taken extend to 56 weeks from the bereavement / pregnancy loss?

  • Does any miscarriage leave policy extend to other forms of pregnancy loss e.g. terminations, IVF transfer loss.

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