Planning Your Leave

Most of the hard parts of family leave aren't in the rules themselves — they're in the choices you have to make as a family. When does each parent take time off? What happens to your monthly pay during the unpaid weeks? How does annual leave fit around it? When do bank holidays count? Are you both off together at any point? And what does the year actually look like, financially?

This collection is the cross-cutting "how to think about it" hub. Rather than focusing on one type of leave, the articles here cover sequencing, pay drops month by month, using annual leave to extend or top up leave, unpaid parental leave, budgeting, and comparing different scenarios.

If you're early in the process and not sure where to start, the planner walks you through it step by step. If you're further along and just want to sense-check a specific decision, the articles below go deep on the specific topics families ask about most.