Great Britain: Families Act passed

Legislation - in the form of the Children and Families Act 2014, which will bring into force various changes to maternity, paternity and adoption rights, received Royal Assent on March 13. It includes a number of measures with relevance to employers such as the extension to all employees of the right to request flexible working (scheduled to take effect on 30 June 2014), the removal of the statutory procedure for considering flexible working requests (also scheduled to take effect on 30 June 2014), the sharing of parental leave and pay (from April 2015). On March 7, the government presented a draft regulation that details the terms of shared parental leave.