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New right

Carer's leave: the day-one right you can use from October 2026

Updated 22 October 2026

Carer's leave is a new statutory right that took effect on 6 October 2026 under the Carer's Leave Regulations 2024, and the headline points for employees are these: It is a day-one right for every employee, regardless of how long you have been in your job. You can take up to one week (5 working days) of unpaid leave in any 12-month period. It is for arranging or providing personal care for a dependant with a long-term care need . You can take it as individual days, as a full week, or any combination in between, and the minimum block is half a working day in length only if you already work a half day. Your employer cannot refuse the request, and they cannot treat you worse for asking or for taking it. If your employer unreasonably postpones the leave or treats you less favourably because you took it, you can take a claim to an employment tribunal.

Who can take carer's leave from 6 October 2026?

If you are an employee, you can take carer's leave. There is no minimum service requirement, no qualifying period, and no earnings threshold. You are eligible from your first day of work. The right covers full-time, part-time, fixed-term, and zero-hours employees. It does not extend to genuinely self-employed contractors or to workers who are not employees, although the line between employee and worker status is one the Government has promised to clarify through its Plan to Make Work Pay implementation timetable.

Your status as an employee is what matters, not the size of your employer. A one-person business that directly employs a single assistant is covered. A large retailer with tens of thousands of staff is also covered. The right sits with you, the employee, not with the person you care for, which means your own adult child, your own parent, your spouse, your partner, your sibling, your grandparent, or any other dependant can be the recipient of the care.

The right is not limited to caring for someone who lives with you. Many employees will be caring from a distance: a parent in another part of the country, a sibling in a different city, an adult child at university with a long-term condition. Carer's leave is designed to be flexible enough to cover all of those arrangements.

You should also be aware that this right sits alongside, not instead of, the existing right to time off for dependants in an emergency. Emergency time off is short, unpaid, and designed for the immediate aftermath of a crisis such as a breakdown in care arrangements or a sudden hospital admission. Carer's leave is planned, longer, and tied to a long-term care need. They are different rights that meet different situations, and the Government has been clear that one does not replace the other.

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Who counts as a dependant with a long-term care need?

A dependant for carer's leave purposes means a person who falls into one of these categories:

A long-term care need is one that is expected to last, or has lasted, at least three months, and that requires the person to receive care, support, or supervision from another individual in order to carry out ordinary day-to-day activities. The definition is modelled closely on the existing framework for emergency dependant leave and on the criteria used to decide who is entitled to Carer's Allowance, although claiming Carer's Allowance is not a precondition for taking carer's leave.

Conditions that commonly meet the long-term care need test include a long-term physical illness, a mental health condition that significantly limits daily activities, a disability, frailty in older age, addiction, or the end-of-life care needs of a terminally ill dependant. Caring for a child with a disability, an adult relative recovering from a serious operation, or a parent with dementia would all be likely to qualify.

What the right does not cover is short-term illness, occasional help with shopping, or caring for a generally healthy but ageing relative who does not have a defined long-term care need. The Government has been explicit that the right is targeted at sustained caring situations rather than occasional, informal help.

You are not required to prove the long-term care need to your employer before taking the leave. The Regulations say that you must give the employer enough information for them to understand the request, but the employer is not entitled to medical evidence, a care plan, or proof from a clinician. If the employer has a reasonable belief that the request is genuine, that is normally enough.

How do I request carer's leave and when can my employer delay it?

To take carer's leave, you must give your employer notice that is at least three times as long as the period of leave you want to take. So if you want to take one day of carer's leave, you give three days' notice. If you want to take a full week, you give three weeks' notice. If you want to take half a day, you give one and a half days' notice. The notice can be verbal, but it is much better to put it in writing, either by email or in a message on your employer's HR system, so that there is a clear record.

Your notice should include:

Your employer cannot refuse a request for carer's leave. The right is absolute in that sense, and the employer does not have a discretion to turn the request down on the basis that they do not agree with the care arrangement or do not believe that you need the time.

What the employer can do is postpone the start of the leave by up to four weeks if they consider that the business cannot reasonably accommodate the request on the dates you have asked for. The bar is set high. The employer must show that the dates you have chosen would cause a substantial and unjustifiable disruption to the business, and the four-week delay is the maximum, not the default. Day-to-day inconvenience, the need to rearrange cover, or a busy week are unlikely to meet that test on their own.

If your employer postpones the leave, they must:

If your employer does not respond within seven days of your request, the leave is treated as approved and must be taken on the dates you originally specified.

What are my rights if my employer treats me worse for taking carer's leave?

Carer's leave is protected from the day you first mention it, including in any preliminary discussion, and protection continues for the period of the leave and beyond. If your employer dismisses you, selects you for redundancy, refuses a promotion, withholds a pay rise, or subjects you to any other detriment because you took, tried to take, or were perceived to be likely to take carer's leave, that is automatically unfair treatment.

A dismissal for a reason connected to carer's leave can be brought to the tribunal as an automatically unfair dismissal, without the usual two-year qualifying period. The compensation that an employment tribunal can award in a carer's leave claim is uncapped, mirroring the position for detriments short of dismissal and reflecting the seriousness with which Parliament treated this category of rights.

Detriment short of dismissal, such as being moved off a desirable project, having your shifts reorganised, being denied training, or being subjected to an unfavourable performance review after taking carer's leave, is also actionable. You would normally need three months' service to bring a general detriment claim at the tribunal, but a detriment claim under the carer's leave route is not subject to that qualifying period.

As with other day-one employment rights, the practical experience of employees in the first weeks of the right will be important. Acas has published an updated section of its guidance on carer's leave, and employers are expected to update their policies and to make their managers aware of the new right. If your workplace policy does not mention carer's leave, you can still rely on the statutory right, and you can refer your manager to the Regulations directly.

If you think your employer has treated you less favourably because you took or sought to take carer's leave, the practical steps are: gather any written evidence (emails, messages, rota changes, performance notes), check the date of the act you want to challenge against the three-month time limit, and consider raising a written grievance. You can bring a claim to the tribunal up to three months minus one day from the act complained of, subject to the early conciliation steps through Acas that apply to most employment claims.

Does carer's leave affect my pay, holiday, or pension?

Carer's leave is unpaid by default. Your employer is not required to pay you for the days you take as carer's leave, and they are allowed to deduct from your pay for any day you do not work. Many employers, particularly larger ones, have chosen to offer paid carer's leave on a discretionary basis, and it is worth checking your contract, your staff handbook, and any policy notes from your employer to see whether paid leave is available on top of the statutory right.

What the Regulations protect is your continuous service and your terms and conditions. Time taken as carer's leave counts as if you had been at work for the purposes of:

Your pension position is also protected. If you are a member of an occupational or auto-enrolment pension scheme, the period of carer's leave is treated as pensionable service in the same way as if you had been at work. Your employer must continue to pay their share of the pension contributions for the period of leave, and you are treated as if you had paid your share, even though no contributions are actually deducted from your pay because the leave is unpaid. The result is that a week of carer's leave does not create a pension gap in your record.

Statutory rights such as the maternity, paternity, adoption, and shared parental leave entitlements are not affected by taking carer's leave, and conversely the fact that you are pregnant, on maternity leave, or have recently returned from a period of family leave does not affect your ability to take carer's leave. The two rights operate side by side, and neither one eats into the other.

Carer's leave and other caring rights at work

Carer's leave is the third strand in a wider package of employment rights that support people with caring responsibilities, sitting alongside:

The new rights are not mutually exclusive. You could, for example, take a week of carer's leave to set up a long-term care arrangement for your parent, then use a subsequent flexible working request to adjust your hours so that ongoing care can be combined with your job. Or you could take parental leave for the school summer holidays and reserve carer's leave for a parent's hospital appointment later in the year.

One question that is being asked by HR teams and by employees alike is what the right looks like for someone who is caring for more than one dependant. The Regulations are clear that the one week of carer's leave is per employee per 12-month period, not per dependant, so you cannot stack weeks to cover two different caring relationships. The week is designed to be a meaningful block of time for one caring situation, and where you have multiple caring responsibilities you would normally need to use the one week in the way that best meets the most pressing need.

Another question is whether the right applies to a dependant who is in residential care rather than living at home. The answer is yes, in principle, because the right is about the personal care you provide or arrange rather than the location of the dependant. A relative in a care home, a parent in hospital for a long-term condition, or an adult child at a specialist school are all potential recipients of carer's leave, provided the long-term care need test is met.

What to do in the meantime

If you are a carer who works, here is what to do now that carer's leave is in force:

Quick answers

Is carer's leave paid or unpaid?
By default, carer's leave is unpaid. Some employers offer paid carer's leave on top of the statutory right, so it is worth checking your contract and staff handbook.
Do I have to give medical evidence to take carer's leave?
No. You must give your employer enough information to understand that the request is genuine and that the recipient is a dependant with a long-term care need, but you are not required to provide medical evidence, a diagnosis, or a care plan.
Can my employer refuse carer's leave?
No. Carer's leave is an absolute right that your employer cannot refuse. They can postpone it by up to four weeks in narrow circumstances if the dates you have chosen would cause substantial and unjustifiable disruption.
How much notice do I need to give for carer's leave?
At least three times the length of the leave you want, measured in days. One day of leave needs three days' notice; a full week needs three weeks' notice. If your employer does not respond within seven days, the leave is treated as approved.
Does carer's leave affect my right to paid holiday?
No. You continue to accrue paid annual leave at your normal rate while you are on carer's leave, and the period counts as continuous service for length-of-service benefits such as enhanced pension contributions or long-service awards.