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Labour’s plan for a week’s bereavement leave for “distant relatives”

ended 10. December 2025

Labour’s Employment Rights Bill is back in the spotlight, this time with a proposal to give workers at least a week of unpaid bereavement leave when a “loved one” dies. That could cover not just close family, but in-laws, cousins, nieces and nephews, and even “chosen family” who are not related by blood or marriage.

At the moment, the only guaranteed statutory bereavement leave is for parents who lose a child under 18 or after a stillbirth. Everything else is down to what employers choose to offer, which means a lot of inconsistency and confusion for both staff and managers.

For small businesses, the idea of a legal right to time off for “distant relatives” raises big practical questions. Who actually counts as a loved one. How do you handle proof without being heartless. What happens to already-stretched rotas if several people are off at once. And how does this sit alongside the compassionate leave you may already offer.

We’re looking for HR professionals, employment lawyers and small business owners to share how this would play out in real workplaces, not just in Westminster.

Questions to answer

  • What is your honest first reaction to a statutory week of unpaid bereavement leave for “distant relatives” or “chosen family”?
  • What do you currently do around bereavement or compassionate leave, and how do you decide what is “reasonable”?
  • Where would you personally draw the line on who counts as a “loved one” for this kind of right, and would you expect any evidence?
  • What would you need from the government or guidance (for example, clear definitions, templates, examples) to make this workable for SMEs in practice?

 

5 responses from the Newspage community

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Kate Underwood
Founder & Chief People Strategist at Kate Underwood HR and Training
You can’t water down unfair dismissal rights last week and then shove ‘loved one’ into law this week and call it worker-friendly.
My gut? Time off to grieve is right. But a week for any “loved one” or “chosen family”, with no clear rules, is a grievance magnet for small employers.
Most SMEs I work with offer 3–5 days for close family, then discretionary compassionate leave. We decide what’s “reasonable” with two questions: what does this person need, and can the business cope?
I’d define a loved one as immediate family plus anyone in the same household, with the manager's discretion beyond that. No standard proof, unless there’s an obvious pattern of pulling a fast one.
To make this workable, the government needs a clear legal definition, example scenarios, and a model bereavement policy that SMEs can adapt and tweak. Tip: sort your bereavement policy now, not in the middle of a crisis.
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Rohit Parmar-Mistry
Founder at Pattrn Data
Let’s be honest: Labour is saving face here. It’s an easy win to look ‘pro-worker’ without spending Treasury cash. But they’ve accidentally highlighted a major flaw in our obsession with machine-like efficiency. We treat staff like biological software: input wages, output labour. But humans don’t just ‘reboot’ after a loss.

In many cultures, mine included, a cousin isn't a ‘distant’ variable; they are core to your life. The danger of relying on discretion is that we are moving toward a world of automated HR. If we don't codify compassion now, we’ll end up with AI schedulers denying leave because ‘Auntie’ isn't a valid data field.

To the cynics: if your business relies on humans acting like robots to survive, you’re already obsolete. We need statutory rights to safeguard our humanity before automated management treats grief as nothing more than 'unproductive downtime'. Stop the "Grief Police" and standardise it.
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Tony Redondo
Founder at Cosmos Currency Exchange
Yet again, this government, whose professed number one goal is economic growth, has a not-so-funny way of showing it. This proposal is designed to appease union supporters rather than support small businesses, the UK's economic backbone, already facing compounding pressures with the big tax increases, higher minimum wage, and elevated business rates. Now they're expected to manage bereavement leave with undefined terms like "loved ones" and "chosen family." These vague categories create worse difficulties without clear boundaries or verification mechanisms. Small employers reasonably ask how to distinguish legitimate bereavement from potential abuse or maintain staffing when multiple employees claim leave simultaneously. The challenge isn't heartlessness. Grief is deeply personal while employment law requires administrable standards. Without clear parameters, this policy risks operational chaos for businesses already struggling under mounting regulatory and financial burdens.
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Dariusz Karpowicz
Director at Albion Financial Advice
Ah yes, because nothing says "making Britain great again" quite like sorting out bereavement leave for your second cousin twice removed. Surely this was the missing piece all along. Fix this and watch productivity soar, exports boom, and the housing crisis vanish overnight.
In all seriousness, most SMEs I know already handle compassionate leave sensibly. Three to five days for close family, then a quiet chat about what else might be needed. The real problem here is the word 'loved one' doing an awful lot of heavy lifting without a proper definition. Small businesses need clarity, not poetry. Give us a workable list, some example scenarios, and a template policy we can actually use. Otherwise you are handing managers an impossible judgment call during someone's worst week.
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Sam Kirk
Managing Director at J-Flex Rubber Products
My initial reaction is: utterly ridiculous! Whilst you'd like to think the intetions were pure, in reality this just feels unrealistic and potentially very burdensome for SMEs.

Small businesses are already under significant pressure when it comes to staffing and resource, so any extended periods of absence - whether paid or unpaid - has a very real impact. The idea that someone could take a full week off due to the death of a distant relative they barely see would be tough for small teams to absorb at short notice.

Thankfully we haven't had many instances where colleagues have requested bereavement leave, however if this proposal becomes law then we will need very clear definitions of who qualifies as a “loved one”, without this clarity, the risk is that SMEs are left trying to interpret vague definitions while simultaneously coping with the operational strain that unmanaged absences can cause.