1. Introduction to Time Off Work

1.     Introduction to Time Off Work

Contributing Editor

THE HONOURABLE MRS JUSTICE HEATHER WILLIAMS

Justice of the High Court

Employment legislation has, in recent years, added considerably to the range of rights to be given time off work, either with or without pay. Apart from the statutory right to paid annual leave under the Working Time Regulations 1998, which is relatively unusual in applying not just to employees in the narrow sense, but also to the wider class of workers, the most important rights conferred on employees are to maternity leave, extended in 2003 to paternity and adoption leave, and the right of parents of both sexes to (unpaid) parental leave. Each of these rights is covered elsewhere (see for annual leave CI [125] ff, for maternity leave J [151] ff, for parental leave J [701] ff, for paternity and adoption leave J [801] ff, and for the most recent addition to this stable, shared parental leave, J [826] ff). The right to time off for ante-natal care, formerly in this Division, has been transferred to J [501] ff as a more logical location, alongside other rights arising in connection with pregnancy, including the new rights to time off for partners of expectant mothers, and to prepare for adopting a child, conferred by the Children and Families Act 2014. Five other categories of