Miss K Butler-Rice v Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust HELD AT: Liverpool (remote, by CVP) — 2025

The claimant, a Band 5 Nurse Practitioner with continuous NHS service from 4 November 2019, took shared parental leave following the birth of her partner's child. The respondent allowed the leave but refused to pay occupational shared parental leave pay under the NHS Agenda for Change scheme, on the basis that she had insufficient qualifying service with the respondent itself (having only commenced employment with them on 4 September 2023). The tribunal found that the claimant's contract acknowledged her continuous NHS service from 2019 and that, on a proper interpretation of the Agenda for Change provisions, reckonable NHS service applied, so the failure to pay 13 weeks of shared parental leave pay at £184.03 per week (totalling £2,393.39) constituted an unauthorised deduction from wages contrary to section 13 ERA 1996.

On the section 47C ERA 1996 detriment claim, the tribunal accepted that a failure to pay wages could in principle amount to a detriment but concluded that the refusal here was not done because the claimant had requested shared parental leave. The available correspondence indicated that the respondent's Payroll team had become confused about the interaction between the statutory shared parental leave/pay scheme and the occupational benefits under Agenda for Change, and had misinterpreted the contractual provisions, failing to take reckonable service into account. The refusal was therefore not causally linked to the protected request for leave, and the detriment claim did not succeed.

The question of remedy in respect of the unauthorised deductions was reserved to a separate remedy hearing to be listed on a date to be advised.