Parental Leave and Employment Protection Act 1987, ss 71D, 71E, 71L
Your parental leave payments will end before the 26-week leave period is up if you:
return to work before the end of that period, or
transfer your entitlement, or some of it, to your spouse or partner (see above).
Note: Your parental leave payments won’t stop if you resign or stop being self-employed or your fixed term employment agreement ends during your paid leave period.
Parental Leave and Employment Protection Act 1987, s 71CE
You can go back to work briefly for what are called “keeping-in-touch days” while you’re getting the parental leave payments, so long as your employer agrees to this. For example, you may want to keep up with skills development or training. You can do up to a total of 52 hours’ work without this counting as a return to work and without stopping your payments. However, you can’t have any keeping-in-touch days until your child is four weeks old.