'Severance pay' for a cleaner

[ronx]

I would like to let my cleaner go next week.

I'll be on maternity leave, so I can't see the point of paying someone to clean the house when will be there to do it myself.

Plus, she's rather slow and isn't very good, so my ML is a good excuse to get rid of her.

How many weeks' money should I pay her? She is usually paid weekly.

Unless you have a contract I'm not sure that there is a legal minimum, but the decent thing to do will be to explain (ok fine, lie, but still) that you won't be able to afford her once you're on maternity leave, and then give her one month's (working) notice, with the option to leave earlier if she prefers.

You can then ask her to do specific things for the remaining weeks, e.g. inside windows, deep clean of bathroom / kitchen etc.

I understand how frustrating it can be if you pay for a service which you feel is not delivered, but you have to remember that cleaning is a lowly paid job, so it's very likely that she needs to be in employment - yours or someone else's, so she'd need to start looking around.

Cleaning is a lowly paid job??? Not round here it aint!!

£10- £13 per hour is normal

Ronx I gave up my cleaner when I started Mat leave- gave her 2 weeks notice. I got a new one when DS was about 3 months old to keep me sane. I just didnt have time to clean when he was small

Well, that is still low compared with some, and food, travel etc costs what it costs. But actually, what I said is irrelevant - it doesn't matter what you earn, we all have commitments, whether we're accountants or cleaners. I think giving the kind of notice you'd prefer if you were to be made redundant, would be the decent thing to do.

She's been working with me for six months and redundancy pay only applies if you've been with your employer for two years or more.

She gets a tenner an hour and does four hours a week. I'm going to give her 2.5 weeks money. I think that's fair.

I don't want to give her the option of working notice - I think she'll get even more slapdash if she won't be getting a regular wage from me any more.