This article outlines how Statutory Parental Bereavement Leave (SPBL) and Statutory Parental Bereavement Pay (SPBP) are supported for employees, including what information is required and how this is reported to HMRC.

Creating Parental Bereavement Leave

When adding a Statutory Parental Bereavement Leave record in BrightPay

• Select the option Parenting Leave and click on Parental Bereavement Leave 

• A new Workplace Location dropdown is available

• If England, Scotland or Wales is selected, proceed to the next field.

  • If Northern Ireland is selected:

  • Enter the workplace postcode

  • Confirm whether the leave is due to a miscarriage

    These additional fields are required for HMRC reporting and are included on the Full Payment Submission (FPS).

• Then:

• Enter the child’s date of death
• Click on Blocks of Leave to add or adjust leave (up to a maximum of 2 weeks)
• Review the Average Weekly Earnings (AWE) and adjust if required
• Use the Notes section to record any relevant information

HMRC Reporting Requirements

HMRC requires the following to be reported separately:

• SPBP – Statutory Parental Bereavement Pay

• SPBPNIRE – Northern Ireland Statutory Parental Bereavement Pay

These are reported individually on:

• FPS (Full Payment Submission)

• EPS (Employer Payment Summary)

BrightPay handles this separation automatically when submissions are made to HMRC.

Additional Fields

To support this reporting requirement, the following fields are available:

• Employee ( Mid Year Totals Tab) SPBPNIRE to date

• HMRC payment additional SPBPNIRE recovered

• HMRC - Additional Amounts - additional fields for SPBPNIRE NIC compensation and Statutory Parental Bereavement Pay in Northern Ireland (SPBPNIRE) recovered

These fields ensure accurate tracking and recovery of Northern Ireland statutory payments.

How SPBP is Displayed

Although HMRC requires separate reporting during the tax year:

• The P60 continues to show a single combined SPBP figure

• Where an employee has both SPBP and SPBPNIRE in the same tax year, the values are combined

For consistency, BrightPay also displays a combined total across most areas, including:

• Payslips

• Reports

• P30 and P11

• Mid-year start summary

• Employee CSV export

Northern Ireland Entitlement Rule

For Northern Ireland parental bereavement leave, the following validation rule is not applied:

If the first day of the 26th week of employment occurs after the Saturday of the qualifying week, the employee is not entitled to statutory pay.

This rule is ignored to ensure the correct entitlement is applied for Northern Ireland cases.