Maternity discrimination ?

[sunflower1230]

Hi All, I was offered a job last week and was over the moon. The employer who called me text me the next day asking what my notice period was. I replied explaining i thought it was 6m but I am on maternity until January 2026. She didn’t reply for two days and sent an email saying she was disappointed I didn’t mention it and they can not wait until January due to my maternity and therefor withdrawing the job offer. The email was a little snotty tbh. However I’ve been discriminated against before for maternity and to me this is discrimination. Should I not of been on maternity she wouldn’t of revoked the offer..

I have since replied stating they have discriminated against me and to rectify urgently and how upset and disappointed I was about the situation. I now know I do not want to work for them and they haven’t replied to this email. I have informed Acas.

but is this discrimination to anyone else plz?

is it an NHS to NHS transfer?

checks wouldn’t take months and if you could have potentially have started in 3-4 months that would have been reasonable.

Only way to prove discrimination is tribunal. You think it is, so go for it.

(Checking tribunal claims is one of the informal checks lots of HR teams do. ;))

I'm pretty sure it isn't discrimination at all. Acas says: "Your employees must give you 28 days' notice of the date they want to start their SMP. This is usually the same date they want to start their leave." (Gov.uk maternity leave, employer guide.) Without this notice, the employer does not have to give you maternity leave, or pay. So I would think, you don't qualify for these if you start a new job during your mat leave, unless you knew your start date 28 or more days prior to the job starting and told your employer about your mat leave.

Well I think it's a bit mean of you to expect someone to wait 6 months until your mat leave ends.

I'm in a similar position to you, looking for something else but definitely wouldn't expect to be appointed now as it would likely be a massive inconvenience to hire me seeing as I don't intend to start working again til beginning of Feb.

6 month notice periods are pretty unusual as well unless I'm super out of touch? (For context I'm a Midwifery Matron and my notice period would be 3 months)

You’ve misunderstood what counts.

Withdrawing a job because of a protected characteristic is fraught with danger. Which is why I’m not convinced they have used the word “maternity” in the withdrawal email.

So you’re on mat leave from your current job. Why do you think you need to stay on mat leave in the new job? You don’t have to be off until Jan 2026; plenty of people return to work quite quickly

Your responses here are fairly immature. If your email to the potential employer crying discrimination is anything like this I'm guessing they are thanking their lucky stars that they've avoided you. Tbh it sounds a bit like you applied for the job hoping to be 'discriminated' against with the aim to get some kind of a payout... I mean who applies for a job that they can't start for 6 months?! I'm a bit flabbergasted by the whole thing and don't think you'd get that far in a tribunal (and if you do I think you're taking advantage of a system set up to deal with genuine cases of discrimination and doing a disservice to women and mothers in the workplace generally).

And as @stichgurupoints out, you haven’t given the required notice of mat leave to the employer.

Do you want to see said email?

The job offer wasn't removed because you are on maternity leave. It was withdrawn because you can't start for six months. See your union of you are not happy.

I love that the OP tried to lie initially and claim 6m notice period, which is not a thing unless you have a non-compete because you could take clients with you, like lawyers etc.

she knew there was no 6m period, she just wanted maternity leave and a new job.

cannot be trusted, new employer dodged a massive bullet

Job adverts pretty much always state a start date or preferred start date too. This smells like BS to me. Even if it were true, the OP hasn’t given the required notice to the potential employer of her start date of Mat leave so they’re under no obligation to offer it

This. Don't take the full years maternity. Or if you want to, don't apply for jobs 6 months before you're ready to go back.

i’m sorry think you’re massively taking the piss.
6 months notice period in the nhs?
i thought most jobs was standard 4 weeks?
they’re crying out for people yet you applied knowing you wouldn’t be able to start, now you’re saying discrimination
this is not discrimination, this is them needing staff and not being able to wait for you.

Few things here (HR qualified)

-Yes they were stupid to put in the email they were withdrawing due to maternity, however if they can strongly argue that they can't wait 6 months for anyone that significantly weakens your case. If there was a male also on six months notice chances are they would've passed on him too.
-The current time from submitting a tribunal claim to being in front of a judge is around 2 years. Your case won't be heard before January so ask yourself are you really prepared to hold onto this for the next few years and what resolution would you actually be wanting?
-NHS/Civil service recruitment doesn't always take ages. I recently went through the process, from application to my start date was 2.5 months.

What further checks would they need to do considering you’re already an NHS employee ?
Are you moving bands significantly ?

I work in a field where recruitment processes take 8 months to 4 years, so I can understand completely why you applied. People don’t seem to be able to imagine that not all fields work identically to their own.
They’ve written an email saying that they are withdrawing the offer because you are on maternity leave, so it’s clearly discrimination. They could have achieved the same outcome without discriminating against you quite easily, but that doesn’t alter the fact that they have discriminated.

A 6 month notice period would be an extremely specialised job. You said you didn't have to disclose you were on maternity leave so why did you was it so they would be frightened that it would be seen as discriminatory not to wait until January when you want to return to work?

I think the issue is there is nothing to say you are being treated differently to anyone else due to maternity, as we don't know they wouldn't have done the same with someone else unable to start until January. So what you're actually expecting is special treatment due to maternity

100% it doesn’t (can’t) take that long in the NHS!

If the job needed someone to start before Jan 2026 and you couldn’t, then it’s likely they withdrew the offer based on business need, not because you’re on maternity leave. It’s probably a HR administrator using clumsy language.

The reason that you can’t start is because you’re on maternity leave but that’s not unlawful if they can show they’d have made the same decision for someone unavailable for that long for any other reason (like a long notice period), then it’s not likely to be seen as discrimination in legal terms.

You’ve got every right to feel frustrated with how they handled it, but not every bad experience is discriminatory. No wonder the NHS is in the state it’s in if people sue at the first instance

There are plenty of posters who work for the NHS posting in this thread who have said it doesn’t take that long, including people in NHS HR. So no one has imagined anything. Recruitment does not take that long. At the very most 3 months, if unable to get references DBS checks failed etc, these are very rare circs, at best moving within the trust it can be less than a month.

As soon as you can’t predict how long it will take, whether months or years, you have to just apply to everything relevant and hope
the timeline lines up at some point. In some fields, this is normal.

It is things like this that sets womens' rights campaigns back a mile and pisses employers off.

What on Earth made you think that the organisation offering the job would wait six months for you?

Applying for it and then not telling them you had a 6 month notice period during the interview process was totally unreasonable on your part, and has caused them a severe inconvenience. No employer is going to want to wait that long. If they'd offered the job to anyone else (a man for instance) who then suddenly dropped a 6-month notice bombshell on them, they'd probably have withdrawn that offer too.

And in case you are wondering, yes I am a feminist, and have been one since long before you were born.