QUALIFYING FOR THE UNIVERSITY'S CONTRACTUAL SHPP SCHEME
If the employee is the primary adopter, they must give their department at least eight weeks’ written notice to end their adoption leave, before either of the adoptive parents can take SPL. This is the ‘curtailment notice’. The notice must state the date the adoption leave will end. Notice can be given before or after the child has been placed, but adoption leave cannot end until at least two weeks after the placement of the child. The pro-forma on the right-hand side can be used for this purpose.
The curtailment notice is binding and cannot usually be revoked. The employee may only revoke a curtailment notice if adoption leave has not yet ended and one of the following applies:
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the employee realises that neither they or the other parent are in fact eligible for SPL or ShPP, in which case they may revoke the curtailment notice in writing up to eight weeks after it was given;
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if the curtailment notice was given before the placement of the child, then the employee may revoke it in writing up to eight weeks after it was given, or up to six weeks after the placement, whichever is later; or
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if the other parent has died.
Once an employee has revoked their curtailment notice they will be unable to opt back into the SPL scheme, unless they revoked it in one of the circumstances described above.
The other parent may start a period of SPL before the primary adopter’s adoption leave ends, on the condition that the primary adopter has given the curtailment notice to end their adoption leave on a future date.