Fertility Treatment Leave: What UK Employees Are Actually Entitled To in 2026/27

Why there's no straightforward "fertility leave" law

Unlike statutory sick pay, maternity pay, or paternity leave, fertility treatment sits in a legal grey area in the UK. Parliament has never legislated a standalone entitlement to paid time off for IVF, egg or sperm donation, fertility investigations, or related appointments. That means whether you get paid time off, unpaid time off, or have to burn your own annual leave depends entirely on your employer's goodwill, your contract of employment, and any internal fertility policy your company has chosen to adopt voluntarily.

This surprises a lot of employees, because fertility treatment is physically demanding, emotionally draining, and often requires multiple appointments during a single working week — scans, blood tests, egg collection, embryo transfer, and follow-up consultations. A typical IVF cycle can involve 10 or more clinic visits over several weeks, many during core office hours since fertility clinics run standard weekday schedules.

Employees planning treatment should check their staff handbook and speak to HR early. Some large employers, particularly in finance, tech, and the public sector, have introduced dedicated fertility policies offering a fixed number of paid days per cycle (commonly somewhere in the range of 2 to 5 paid days), but this remains entirely voluntary and inconsistent across the labour market.

How time off is actually treated in practice

In the absence of a specific policy, most employers fall back on one of three routes for fertility-related time off:

1. Paid annual leave — the employee books the appointment as a normal holiday day, drawing down from their statutory 5.6-week (28 days pro-rata for a full-time worker) entitlement.
2. Unpaid leave — for employees who have exhausted their holiday allowance or whose employer won't authorise holiday for this purpose, unpaid leave is often the fallback.
3. Flexible working / TOIL — some employers allow staff to make up hours later in the week or work from home around appointments, avoiding the need to formally book leave at all.

None of these routes are guaranteed. An employer can, in principle, refuse a specific day off if it isn't covered by a formal right, though outright refusal is rare given the reputational and retention risk. If you're weighing up how much of your annual leave a treatment cycle might consume, it's worth running the numbers with

to see exactly how many days you have left after a course of appointments.

Worked example 1: Annual leave burn-through

Sarah works full-time on a standard 5-day week and has the statutory minimum of 28 days' annual leave (5.6 weeks) for the year, inclusive of bank holidays. Her IVF cycle requires 6 half-days and 2 full days off across 5 weeks. If her employer only authorises leave in full-day units, that's 8 days consumed — nearly a third of her annual entitlement — purely for one treatment cycle, before she's taken a single day of ordinary holiday.

What happens if you're signed off sick instead

Fertility treatment, particularly ovarian stimulation and egg collection, can cause side effects such as bloating, cramping, or ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome, which sometimes leads to a formal sickness absence rather than booked leave. If your employer certifies this as sickness absence, standard Statutory Sick Pay (SSP) rules apply for 2026/27: £123.25 per week, payable from the very first day of sickness now that waiting days have been removed (as of April 2026), provided your average weekly earnings are at least £129/week and you meet the other eligibility conditions. SSP runs for up to 28 weeks.

Worked example 2: SSP during a difficult cycle

Priya earns £480/week and is signed off sick for 9 days (just over 1 week) following egg collection complications. Under the 2026/27 rules, she qualifies for SSP because her average weekly earnings exceed the £129 Lower Earnings Limit. She receives £123.25 for the full week of absence from day one — no waiting days apply. If her employer offers enhanced contractual sick pay (many do, often full pay for a set number of weeks), she may receive more than the statutory minimum; her contract, not the law, determines that. Use

to check exactly how SSP would apply to your own pattern of absence and earnings.

When legal protection actually begins: embryo transfer, not a positive test

This is the detail most employees get wrong. UK law treats a woman as legally pregnant, for discrimination purposes, from the date of embryo transfer during IVF treatment — not from a confirmed positive pregnancy test two weeks later. This matters because pregnancy and maternity discrimination protections under the Equality Act 2010 attach from that moment, covering a "protected period" that continues even if the transfer is unsuccessful, typically ending two weeks after a negative test result (or at the end of the protected period rules if the pregnancy does not proceed).

Before embryo transfer — during ovarian stimulation, egg collection, or earlier fertility investigations — there is no equivalent automatic protection specifically tied to fertility treatment. General protections against sex discrimination can still be relevant in some cases (for example, if treatment is only relevant to one sex and an employer treats it unfavourably), but this is a more complex, fact-specific legal argument rather than a guaranteed right.

Worked example 3: From treatment to maternity pay

Aisha undergoes embryo transfer in March 2027 and it succeeds. From the transfer date, she has pregnancy discrimination protection at work even before a positive test is confirmed. Her pregnancy proceeds normally, and she later qualifies for Statutory Maternity Pay: 90% of her average weekly earnings for the first 6 weeks, then the lower of £194.32/week or 90% of average weekly earnings for up to 33 further weeks — 39 paid weeks in total out of up to 52 weeks of maternity leave. If Aisha earns £600/week average, her first 6 weeks pay at 90% is £540/week; for the remaining 33 weeks she'd receive £194.32/week, since 90% of £600 (£540) is higher than the cap. Run your own figures through

before treatment starts, so you know what income to expect if it's successful.

Practical steps if you're planning treatment

Given the patchy legal landscape, the practical advice for anyone starting fertility treatment is to front-load the admin rather than assume rights that don't exist:

• Ask HR in writing whether the company has a dedicated fertility policy, and if not, whether one can be applied informally (many managers will accommodate reasonable requests even without a formal policy).
• Map out likely appointment dates against your remaining annual leave using
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  Try the calculator

  Holiday Entitlement Calculator

  Calculate your statutory holiday entitlement in days and hours for full-time and part-time workers in the UK.

  Open Holiday Entitlement calculator→
  so you're not caught short later in the year.
• Understand your sick pay position in case treatment side effects require time off — check both statutory and any enhanced contractual sick pay terms in your contract.
• Keep a written record of when embryo transfer occurs, since this is the trigger date for pregnancy discrimination protection if treatment is successful.
• If treatment leads to pregnancy, start planning your maternity leave and pay position early using
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  Try the calculator

  Maternity Pay Calculator

  Calculate Statutory Maternity Pay (SMP) for the full 39-week maternity leave.

  Open Maternity Pay calculator→
  and
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  Try the calculator

  Budget Planner

  Plan your monthly budget by entering income and expenses across all categories to see your surplus or shortfall.

  Open Budget Planner calculator→
  to manage the transition to reduced income during the lower-paid weeks.

Fertility treatment leave remains one of the more employer-dependent areas of UK workplace rights. Until legislation changes, your actual entitlement will come down to what's written in your contract and staff handbook — so it pays to ask the question before treatment starts, not during it.