Unpaid parental leave: weeks per child

Unpaid time off to look after a child — 18 weeks for each child, usable any time up to their 18th birthday.

18weeks

Corroborated Statutory Instrument Great Britain in force since 2013-03-08

Checked against its sources: statute verified 2026-09-21·guidance verified 2026-09-21

Scope: 18 weeks per child, and unpaid. It is NOT 18 weeks a year: paragraph 8 of Schedule 2 — the default scheme that applies where the contract carries no parental-leave agreement of its own (reg 16) — says an employee "may not take more than four weeks' leave in respect of any individual child during a particular year", and that annual cap is a separate figure. The 18th-birthday limit in regulation 15 is a separate provision and is not this record either.

Current sources

Source A · Legislationhttps://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2013/283/made (SI 2013/283 reg 3(2)(a): "In regulation 14 (extent of entitlement)- (a) for paragraph (1) substitute" a new paragraph (1) reading "An employee is entitled to eighteen weeks' leave in respect of any individual child"; in force 8 March 2013, reg 1)

retrieved 2026-09-08

Source B · Official guidancehttps://www.gov.uk/parental-leave ("Parental leave is unpaid. You're entitled to 18 weeks' leave for each child and adopted child, up to their 18th birthday")

retrieved 2026-09-09

History

Value	From	To	Status	Sources
18	2013-03-08	—	Corroborated	Legislation: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2013/283/made (SI 2013/283 reg 3(2)(a): "In regulation 14 (extent of entitlement)- (a) for paragraph (1) substitute" a new paragraph (1) reading "An employee is entitled to eighteen weeks' leave in respect of any individual child"; in force 8 March 2013, reg 1) retrieved 2026-09-08 Official guidance: https://www.gov.uk/parental-leave ("Parental leave is unpaid. You're entitled to 18 weeks' leave for each child and adopted child, up to their 18th birthday") retrieved 2026-09-09

Receipt

Everything above is reproducible and independently checkable — no trust in this site required (how verification works).

Figure ID: employment.leave.parental_weeks
Record fields (source type · unit · jurisdiction · status): si·weeks·GB·corroborated
Record hash (canonical JSON, SHA-256): sha256:05bd1393809d8e76096e09196d2575594091646b2735d8b8c49e5acb93a86261
Source snapshots (SHA-256): Legislation: sha256:62510559d99d9be92a45e1b365dd2d0fe7cefb85e75711022cbe393dd958dca1; Official guidance: sha256:a3ebd11ca5662b66c9dce4e5c48d99e7d93aa354e9787a204d9911616a8b6570
Listed in the signed manifest: release 3.0.0 manifest · record_hashes["employment.leave.parental_weeks"]
Machine-readable record: /v1/figures/employment.leave.parental_weeks · current only: /v1/figures/employment.leave.parental_weeks/current

Compiler's notes

An SI carry (ADR-0014): SI 2013/283 reg 3(2)(a) substituted paragraph (1) WHOLE, so there is no "for X substitute Y" for NF-1 to re-derive — the new paragraph arrives as a block and carries no provision id of its own in the amender's as-made document. The evidence is the pair: the 1999 Regulations' current view, where the value is today, and SI 2013/283 as made, the frozen witness that put it there. Both are hashed into this record and recomputed at Gate 2. One value only: the 13 weeks this replaced — the amending instrument's own explanatory note says it increased the entitlement "from 13 weeks to 18 weeks" — waits for a parser that can read a block substitution.