Nanny Pregnancy/Maternity Leave

To make it easier for you Little, you can confirm it from ACAS here where it states very clearly:

Once notification has been given to the employer they must write to the employee, within 28 days of receiving her notification, setting out her return date. The employee must give eight weeks' notice to change the return date.

Little my comments have absolutely nothing to do with wanting to take full maternity leave. You have misread or misunderstood. And by law (you can look it up) it is eight weeks to change your returning to work date, be it earlier or later.

OP, I don't think there's any need to go through redundancy. Surely you'd like her to stay as far into her pregnancy as possible (you should do a risk assessment by the way)? Just note to her that, on reflection, NWOC won't work for you. She will then either seek alternative care for her child and come back early or take her full year and you can seek a cover nanny and discuss at interview that the position may become permanent.

Pressuring someone into resigning because they want to take their full maternity leave is pretty clear discrimination.

I disagree. At no stage was anything said about refusing an employee to take their full maternity leave - that is the employee's responsibility to sort out and decide how much time they want to take. The employee needs to put in writing her request to change her terms and allow an appropriate amount of time (28 days unless different in the contract) for that to be accepted or declined. If she hadn't done this and continues to not formally request it, the employer is under no obligation to force her to do so although it would be prudent to have in writing that that they have been made aware that they need to do this. It is like saying refusing someone part time hours would be forcing them out of a job because they said they couldn't afford childcare if they came back full time. I also cannot believe that any tribunal would not agree that there was a business need to keep the status quo as it was with the nanny looking after four children.

The only reference to giving 8 weeks notice I can see is if the employee wants to return to work earlier, not clear that it also refers to taking full leave entitlement.

OP, as your boss is a family member, you have some other link to him/her. A woman who you met a couple of times for interview and who you would never have seen again if she disclosed her pregnancy doesn't have any such link to you!

And if I was the nanny, I certainly wouldn't be saying i would be back after six weeks if I didn't have the NWOC variation in writing.

OP does she need to drive around your four children all at once ?

Fuzzy, the default is a maternity leave of 12 months.

If nanny indicated she wanted to take a maternity leave of six weeks and come back to the same job, then she would be giving notice of a shorter maternity leave that she could only vary with 8 weeks' notice. Then your scheme might work.

In this case, the nanny has asked to come back to a different job ie NWOC. If that different job is not available then she wouldn't take six weeks leave but potentially the full year (whilst probably looking for a NWOC job).

Fuzzy - it would be quite clear that you refused the request to bring the baby back and refused the request to allow her to take her full maternity leave with the intention of forcing the employee out of a job.

How Little? The OP would be saying that the employee' exact terms and conditions remained unchanged and her request to alter them upon her return to work could not be accommodated. Completely legal because, as the OP says, this change has not been agreed and it would be no different to someone being off and asking to return to work part time hours and it being refused. All the nanny is entitled to after six weeks of maternity leave is the same job she had before she left and that would be exactly what the OP would be offering. The fact it would be untenable got the nanny because she could not get her own childcare is irrelevant.

I completely understand the OP's annoyance, and anyone else put in the situation, when someone doesn't announce their pregnancy at interview and waits until she has the job (and has probably passed the probationary period). However, most mothers want the best for their child and some work and income is undoubtably far better than nothing at all or being on benefits and having to go to lots and lots interviews whilst heavily pregnant when you don't need to declare anything as your bump does the talking.

I think you would be on extremely dodgy ground if you tried that Fuzzy - it looks like clear discrimination. Financially might work out better for the nanny though.

Little because the OP said the nanny had arranged to take six weeks of maternity leave. By law, you need to give eight weeks' notice to change. Whilst, yes, she is fully entitled to take 12 months off if she wishes (plus any acrued annual leave) if the OP said her return with the newborn could not be accommodated and the nanny could not return to work as a result, she would not have enough time to give the required notice to extend her maternity leave.

If you don't have a choice then you actually would do the same if you had to rather than sacrifice yourself for your boss

The car sounds like a perfectly good reason why you can't accommodate her working request, along with the fact you don't think she will be able to meet your children's complex needs related to ASD while looking after a baby.

OP, but on that basis, this woman would be completely unable to earn a living for nine months or more. It's not her own gain, it's her livelihood - (presuming she's not living off a trust fund and nannying for fun).

She may well have miscarried in the past so not necessarily have expected to see the pregnancy through. She may be irregular and have tested late. I assume she was in another job before that finished for some reason (as otherwise she would not have voluntarily given up SMP probably) - again, quite possibly because her employers put their career or life choices above hers, more or less inevitable in this kind of role. If you fell pregnant again, doubtless you would have made her redundant once your maternity leave started.

I would just say about the car.

Also five kids altogether is a bit much .

It's good for you to have the choice. Not everyone does, especially those on lower pay.