ERA 2025: Carer's Leave — Employer Guide

The Carer's Leave Act, which came into force in 2024, gives employees with dependants a right to one week of unpaid carer's leave per year. The Employment Rights Act 2025 builds on this by strengthening the protections against detriment for taking carer's leave and clarifying that dismissal following carer's leave may be automatically unfair.

The entitlement applies from day one of employment. Employees do not need to provide evidence of their caring responsibilities — the right is based on self-certification. They must give advance notice (three days' notice or twice the amount of leave requested, whichever is longer), but they do not need to justify the request.

For most businesses, one week of unpaid leave per employee per year is a manageable operational reality. The risk is not in granting the leave — it is in how managers respond to the request. An employee who takes carer's leave and subsequently faces a performance warning, a redundancy selection, or a poor performance review has grounds to claim detriment. Mellow logs carer's leave requests and connects them to the employee's subsequent HR timeline, so that pattern is visible.