The right to grieve

New reforms go some way towards filling employment law’s long-acknowledged statutory gap, writes Robert Hargreaves

The Employment Rights Act 2025 creates a new day-one right to bereavement leave, extended beyond the existing parental bereavement leave scheme to cover the death of a wider category of loved ones.

Much of the commentary surrounding the Employment Rights Act 2025—the most significant overhaul of employment law in a generation—receiving royal assent on 18 December 2025 has focused on headline reforms: the abolition of the two-year qualifying period for unfair dismissal, the extension of day-one rights, and the doubling of the protective award for collective redundancy failures. Somewhat overshadowed by these changes is a set of reforms that are, for many workers, of far greater immediate personal significance: the transformation of bereavement leave.

Prior to the Act, statutory bereavement leave was conspicuously narrow. The Parental Bereavement (Leave and Pay) Act 2018, brought into force in April 2020, gave eligible employees two weeks’ paid leave following the death of a child under 18 or a stillbirth

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The right to grieve

Issue: 8154 / Categories: Features , Employment , Family

New reforms go some way towards filling employment law’s long-acknowledged statutory gap, writes Robert Hargreaves

The Employment Rights Act 2025 creates a new day-one right to bereavement leave, extended beyond the existing parental bereavement leave scheme to cover the death of a wider category of loved ones.

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