Statutory Parental Bereavement Pay in Northern Ireland is now a day‑one entitlement. The Department for the Economy has made the Statutory Parental Bereavement Pay (Employment and Earnings) (Amendment) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2026 (SR 2026 No. 74), which came into operation on 6 April 2026 and rework eligibility and calculation rules under the Social Security Contributions and Benefits (Northern Ireland) Act 1992.
Sealed on 1 April 2026 and laid under section 172(1) of the 1992 Act, the instrument requires approval of the Northern Ireland Assembly within six months of commencement, meaning by 6 October 2026. The Department acted with the concurrence of HM Revenue & Customs and HM Treasury as required.
Part 2 removes the previous 26 weeks’ continuous service condition contained in the 2023 General Regulations, ensuring statutory parental bereavement pay operates as a day‑one right in line with sections 3 and 5 of the Parental Bereavement (Leave and Pay) Act (Northern Ireland) 2022. In place of the service bar, entitlement is tested against earnings over a defined eight‑week reference window.
Regulation 19 restates how ‘normal weekly earnings’ are identified. The relevant period is either the full eight weeks ending immediately before the week of the bereavement or any continuous sequence of weeks within that window that ends at the same point. Earnings due but not yet paid for work in the relevant period must still be treated as earned in that period, and back‑dated pay rises attributable to that period must be included. Where there is no identifiable normal pay day, a day‑of‑payment test applies.
The Regulations also address earnings that fall between the end of the eight‑week window and the first day of the bereavement. For that intervening period of days, sums paid under the contract must be counted and added, where relevant, to expected earnings for the week of the bereavement so that the normal weekly earnings figure is not understated.
A new regulation 19A introduces ‘expected normal weekly earnings’ to allow entitlement to be determined on reasonable assumptions where actual earnings are absent or atypical. For the seven weeks immediately after the week of the bereavement, employers should calculate what the worker could reasonably be expected to earn, taking account of contractual rate of pay, normal working hours, representative historic pay before the reference window, any pre‑arranged unpaid absences unconnected to entitlement, and other reasonable information.
Expected earnings must be calculated on the basis that the employment continues for the remainder of the statutory eight‑week period, even if it is due to end sooner, and back‑dated pay increases covering the period must be treated as if in force. Where two or more employers are treated as one employment on the first day of bereavement, expected earnings from each are aggregated and liability for statutory parental bereavement pay is apportioned between them according to agreement or, failing that, in proportion to each employer’s share of the aggregated expected earnings.
Regulation 20 updates the weekly rate rules for cases meeting the weekly earnings threshold. The rate is set at 90% of the normal weekly earnings determined for the qualifying window, with detailed formulae to handle scenarios that blend actual earnings from the eight‑week period before bereavement with expected earnings from the following seven weeks and the week of the bereavement. The approach is designed to produce a consistent eight‑week average across nine defined scenarios.
Regulation 21 widens the provision on set‑off against contractual remuneration to include cases where the employee experiences a miscarriage. Regulation 22 strengthens the avoidance‑of‑liability safeguard by making a former employer responsible for payment where employment was ended solely or mainly to avoid statutory parental bereavement pay, with the employee treated as employed up to the week of the bereavement for the purpose of calculating normal or expected earnings.
Part 3 amends the Statutory Parental Bereavement Pay (Persons Abroad and Mariners) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2022. It aligns references to the 2023 General Regulations, inserts a definition of miscarriage, and applies the miscarriage criterion to cases where the miscarriage is experienced, or becomes known, on or after 6 April 2026.
The instrument also allows certain periods of employment in an EEA state to be counted as if they were employment in Northern Ireland for entitlement purposes, provided the individual is subject to United Kingdom social security legislation under Council Regulation 1408/71 or Regulation 883/2004 on the coordination of social security systems. New regulations 5A and 5B set out how EEA weeks in the eight weeks before the relevant week, and expected weeks in the forward eight‑week period, are treated, with ‘relevant week’ defined as the week immediately before the one in which the child dies or the miscarriage is experienced.
For employers and payroll providers, the immediate operational steps are to update policies and systems for the eight‑week earnings test, expected‑earnings calculations and apportionment where employments are treated as one; to ensure back‑dated rises and earnings due but unpaid are captured correctly; and to check cross‑border arrangements for staff who may fall within UK social security for EEA work. The Department for the Economy has published a regulatory impact assessment dated 23 February 2026.