BPPL: Contractual issues
Contents
Terms and conditions
Your contract of employment continues throughout your bereaved partner's paternity leave (BPPL) unless either you or the employer specifically end it, or it expires.
During leave, you have a statutory right to continue to benefit from all the terms and conditions of employment that would have applied to you had you been at work.
The only exception is for the terms relating to wages or salary (but you must still be paid for KIT days).
Examples of contractual terms and conditions that continue during leave include:
- Gym membership
- Participation in share schemes
- Reimbursement of professional subscriptions
- The use of a company car or mobile phone (unless provided for business use only)
Continuous employment
BPPL counts towards your period of continuous employment for the purposes of entitlement to other statutory employment rights (e.g. the right to a redundancy payment) or any contractual rights (e.g. benefits that depend on length of service).
Accrual of annual leave
You continue to accumulate statutory - and any contractual - annual leave entitlement throughout BPPL.
You can't take annual leave during the BPPL - but can take it immediately before or after it. You can carry over any untaken leave into the next holiday year, but it must be used by the end of that holiday year.
Contributions to a workplace pension scheme
You and your employer must maintain your contribution to your pension during BPPL if the pension scheme rules require you to do so, or if it's an obligation in your contract.
If there's no such requirement, you may still make voluntary contributions if the pension scheme rules allow you to do so.