Paid carer's leave in the UK: what exists now

Key Takeaways

Paid carer's leave is not a statutory right in the UK. The day-one week is unpaid. Some employers already pay some of it. The Make Work Pay review closed on 1 September 2026 and has not changed the law.

Check the handbook this week. Then cover the weekday slot with visiting hours. Five paid days, if they ever arrive, still will not do the 7.45 shower.

Is carer's leave paid in the UK?

No. Not the statutory week.

GOV.UK gives employees in England, Scotland and Wales up to one week of unpaid carer's leave in any 12 months, from the first day in the job, to give or arrange care for a dependant with a long-term need. Old age counts. A parent counts. A neighbour who relies on you counts.

Acas is the page HR will open. The employer might choose to pay. They do not have to. That is the whole gap between the law and the payslip.

If you need the notice rules, half days, and what they can postpone, how to take unpaid carer's leave is that page. This one is the money.

What some employers already pay

Leila is 44. Claims handler, Solihull office three days a week. Mum is 80, Hall Green, a 22-minute bus. The shower had become a 40-minute job.

She opened the handbook on a Sunday night because she cannot afford five unpaid days. Three paid carer's leave days sat in the policy, on top of the statutory week. She booked two of them as Tuesday afternoons, three days' notice each time, labelled arranging care for a dependant. She did not write mum.

That is paid carer's leave when a firm already offers it. It is still a handful of hours. It is not a rota.

CIPD's summer 2026 member poll, of about 100 people professionals, found 91% would support up to five days of statutory paid leave. 5% would not. The same response, drawing on CIPD's 2025 flexible and hybrid working survey, found 52% of organisations already had a policy or procedure for carer's leave. 29% did not. 19% did not know. Since April 2024, only 15% had seen more requests for time off to manage caring.

A right that costs a week's pay does not show up as a spike on an HR dashboard. A paid version might. I would still not wait for the dashboard.

A People lead in a 180-person firm in Kelham Island, Sheffield, has three paid days in the handbook and an EAP on the intranet. The EAP is counselling. A wash and breakfast is a person in the house at 7.45. If you are writing the policy rather than living it, eldercare employee benefits is the employer version.

What the 2026 review actually asked

The Make Work Pay consultation ran from 9 June to 1 September 2026. Paid leave was on the table. So was a longer unpaid block, and a possible right to return after an intensive spell. GOV.UK now says it is analysing the feedback. The review is due to report in winter 2026 to 2027.

Nobody has set a rate. The consultation pointed at other statutory pay as a comparison. Statutory Sick Pay is £123.25 a week. Statutory Maternity Pay after the first six weeks is £194.32 a week, or 90% of average weekly earnings if that is lower.

CIPD asked for five paid days. Carers UK, in the May 2026 Tipping Point report, asked for a statutory right to paid leave, and found 45% of working carers said it would make them more likely to stay in paid employment. 60% said it would make them feel less stressed. That is a survey answer. It is not a rota.

I do not know whether a paid week will exist this Parliament. I would not plan the mortgage around a consultation.

Five paid days still will not cover the shower

Leila's two Tuesday afternoons bought a care needs assessment with Birmingham and two introductions. Same person, 7.45 to 9.15, Monday to Friday. She stayed for the first visit the following week on a half day of unpaid leave.

The NHS still puts help at home from a paid carer at about £15 to £30 an hour. Ten weekday hours at £28 is about £14,560 a year. Hourly rates in 2026 wander by borough.

Five paid days, even at full salary, are a logistics week. They are not the 7.45 slot. A later start keeps more of the salary than dropping a day, and it only holds if someone else is in the bathroom. Arranging home care while working is the diary version of the same problem.

If the money is already looking ugly, the cost of quitting work to care is the calculator.

The number from last week

On 23 September 2026, Keep Britain Working put lost output from unpaid carers at £37 billion a year, inside a £212 billion bill for health-related inactivity, close to 7% of GDP.

That £37 billion is the same figure DWP published in March 2025, using 2022 data, for around 544,000 working-age unpaid carers who were out of work because caring stopped them working. Last week's review just put it in a growth paper. It is people who have already left. It does not count Leila's two Tuesday afternoons.

The Centre for Care at the University of Sheffield, writing with Carers UK in July 2026, quoted Carers UK modelling that five paid days would cost £5.5 million to £32 million a year. The absence of paid leave, they said, costs the state about £1.3 billion a year in lost tax and extra benefits. Every day, 600 carers leave work.

The Resolution Foundation found a working-age person is 37% more likely to leave employment in the period they become a carer. I find that one harder to sit with than the billions, because it is a person, in a given month, walking out.

Whether the government will match those handbooks this Parliament is an open question. The consultation has closed. The law has not moved. The legal week still exists. Half days exist for a reason. Some handbooks already pay.

What to do on Monday

Open the handbook. Search "carer". If they pay some days, use those first, then the rest of the statutory week unpaid. Send the four-line email with dates, even if Acas says it does not have to be in writing.

Call the council where they live and ask for a care needs assessment. Give dates that already fit the notice rules. Ask for a carer's assessment for yourself on the same call.

Then name the slot. 7.45 to 9.15. Or lunchtime tablets. Send the email with a rota behind it, not a hope that winter's PDF will wash anyone.

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How Match with Care can help

The second Tuesday is quieter if there is already a shortlist.

Match with Care is a managed introductory care marketplace. We interview carers, check enhanced DBS, right to work, and references, then show you profiles so your parent can meet someone before they have a key. We are not a traditional domiciliary care agency, and we are not CQC-registered as a care provider. Introductory matching does not work that way.

What we can do is keep the first ask small: weekday mornings, or two lunchtime visits, often around 20 to 30 per cent below typical agency quotes, with a care advisor if the match is wrong. Hours go in the app. You get a weekly invoice. You send the four-line email with a rota behind it.

If you want to talk through the slot without putting your parent or your manager on the line, call +44 7962 657635 or email hello@matchwithcare.com.