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Newspage RawSource: Kate Underwood, Kate Underwood HR & Training

Baby Loss Awareness Week and the new law hands your employee time off with nothing to live on

ended 09. October 2026

Baby Loss Awareness Week runs from Friday 9 to Thursday 15 October, closing with the Wave of Light at 7pm on the 15th. https://babyloss-awareness.org/ From April 2027, pregnancy loss becomes a statutory day one right to two weeks of bereavement leave. It covers miscarriage, termination and IVF embryo transfer loss before 24 weeks, and it reaches the partner, the other parent and intended parents in surrogacy, not just the person who was pregnant. https://www.lewissilkin.com/insights/2026/09/24/how-the-new-right-to-bereavement-leave-will-work

Here is the sting. It is unpaid. The government has ruled out statutory pay, so the cost of doing the decent thing lands on the employer or on nobody. No evidence can be demanded, and notice can come the morning of, which means the only thing standing between a grieving employee and a terrible experience is whether their boss thought about this in advance. Unpaid leave after losing a baby is a sympathy card with the stamp missing. Decide now whether you will pay it, write it down in one paragraph, and tell your team before they need it.

Here are the questions asked of experts:

  • Should pregnancy loss leave be paid, or is unpaid all a small employer can realistically carry?
  • Protect the grieving parent or protect the business: which comes first in a team of six?
  • Have you ever handled a pregnancy loss with no policy to fall back on? What did you do?

2 responses from the Newspage community

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Kate UnderwoodVerified
Founder & Chief People Strategist at Kate Underwood HR & Training
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I have lost a baby. There is no sentence that covers it and I am not going to pretend there is. What I can tell you, after nearly thirty years in HR, is that no two of these are ever the same and no two people react the same. Some want to be at work on Monday. Some cannot get out of the car. And the spouse? The new right does reach the partner, which is progress. It just gives them the same nothing. Two weeks unpaid each. Meanwhile, a stillbirth at 25 weeks is paid and a loss at 23 weeks is not. Same baby, same grief, different spreadsheet. Pay it, write it down, then ask the person what they need instead of telling them.
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Harvey DhillonVerified
Founder & CEO at Zmartly
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Pregnancy loss leave should be paid, and a small employer can carry it far more easily than a grieving parent can go without their pay. The government says the leave "will be unpaid" and that pay is up to employers, and that's a bad decision because of who it leaves to foot the bill. After a stillbirth, an employer that hands over statutory parental bereavement pay claims most of it back from HMRC. Under Small Employers' Relief a small firm gets back 109 per cent, a little more than it paid out. For an earlier loss in Great Britain, pay for this leave can't be reclaimed, so every pound is the employer's own. In a small team the parent comes first, because the cost is small and known: up to a fortnight's wages for each parent on leave, plus any cover. Work out that sum now, set it aside, and decide that you'll pay it. Nobody who's grieving should have to ask whether they'll be paid.