Childcare vouchers on materntiy leave

[Secondchild2019]

Hoping someone might be able to shed a bit of light on this. DS1 (3) goes to nursery and I'm due DC2 at the end of May. DS1 will start school in September.

I noticed something at work today that said childcare vouchers are cancelled when your maternity leave starts as you can't be in the scheme when on mat leave as it would a subsidy would be discriminatory to those not on mat leave.)

I can't work out why it would be discriminatory - have emailed HR to check but wondered if anyone knew anymore?

I was on maternity last year and still carried on with my voucher scheme. So it’s not a universal rule or anything.

We couldn't receive gov tax-free childcare (the equivalent of childcare vouchers) while me/my husband was on mat leave/parental leave, which is fair enough. Both need to be working to qualify for this.

Childcare vouchers do carry on while you’re on ML. Bear in mind that if you leave the voucher scheme now you won’t be able to re-join it afterwards as you will have to go onto tax-free childcare (which, as a previous poster said, you’re only eligible for if both parents are working over 16 hours a week at minimum wage).

It used to be that you could pause the vouchers during your qualifying period to ensure your ML wage would be calculated against your maximum salary, but I don’t know whether that’s still true. It might be safer to alter your salary sacrifice for vouchers to the minimum amount (£5 or something?) during your qualifying period, rather than stopping the vouchers altogether then.

Your pay can't be deducted below SMP do vouchers either carry on (at employers cost) or need to be paused. Don't leave the scheme as you won't be allowed back in!

I think it might be because your employer is not allowed to deduct the cost of the vouchers from your mat leave allowance so the company has to pick up the bill for the cost, effectively subsidising you.
You can drop the monthly vouchers to a minimal amount eg £10 and pay yourself so you don’t lose entitlement to the scheme.

My employer tried to convince me to cancel my vouchers in the qualifying period for SMP saying I would get less money during the 90% 6 week period, but i couldn't afford to do it as I still needed to pay for my daughter's nursery. It was only when on maternity leave that I realised why. I accrued my normal vouchers each month which was a godsend when I returned to work. Don't let them try and get you to cancel them!

My employer paid for my vouchers when I dropped down to smp but I don't think all employers do this. It might be better to reduce the amount you sacrifice rather than quit the scheme as you can't rejoin.

I work for a childcare voucher company.
You can use childcare vouchers while on maternity as long as you are not on smp only. You will need to check your employers mat policy as some do fund while you are on smp so its worth having a deduction at the beginning if they will honour that the rest of the time. Means you can pay for the older one still or build it up to pay for when you return to work. But employers do not have to do this so make sure to check!

If you do cancel while on SMP, you can take a break of 52 weeks and return to the scheme so should cover most mat leave anyway

Thanks all for your helpful advice. I have heard back from HR and they have said childcare vouchers are suspended the month after I start maternity leave. As some of you have said, it's because they can't take vouchers from SMP as it's a statutory payment. But they also won't just take it from the months where I do still earn a salary which is a shame.

It sounds like I can rejoin though as they suspend me rather than totally cancel and from what Coffeewithmyoxyg3n says, I should be able to rejoin anyway (thank you Coffee.)

Childcare vouchers have always confused me! Thanks all.

They absoloutley cannot stop you receiving them. They are an employee benefit and they are not allowed to alter your benefits because you are on maternity. That in itself is discriminatory. If there are others on the scheme not on maternity then you are being unfairly treated.

I'll have a Google now for some official wording.

From hmrc

They can stop them if you were paying for them through salary sacrifice but not if the company was paying for them. In the latter situation it would be a company benefit which can't be taken off you during mat leave but not in the former case. Mine were stopped as I was on SMP and had been paying for them via salary sacrifice. It was a bitter pill to swallow but 100% legal.

Thanks Bernadette - that's what I thought when I first found out, seemed to discriminate those on maternity leave rather than the other way around!

I think it must be because I pay through salary sacrifice as Etiquette says. Although I don't understand why they won't allow it whilst I still get paid some salary, before i go down to just SMP.

Never mind, just means a bit more budgeting I suppose!

I was the last through my company to get them whilst on Mat leave - there had been a recent legal case (2016) to prove that the payment in when on SMP was a benefit others were not entitled to, as the company are paying above SMP rate to you as others have said they can't reduce the SMP amount to reflect it.

It might be they have a blanket policy of after first month for some reason. Could be some aren't earning enough for the first 6 weeks payment to be the only one to cover the payment.

maternityaction.org.uk/2016/03/change-in-law-on-childcare-vouchers/

It was 8 years ago but I still got childcare vouchers whilst on mat leave

You can have deductions up until the month you go down to SMP only. Because you're on maternity leave you aren't effected by nmw/nlw so can have the full voucher as long as you are getting at least £243 a month on top of your SMP.

But your employer runs the scheme so if their maternity policy is no vouchers while on mat leave then you wouldn't be able to override them on this.

I’ve just come off 12 months of maternity leave and have had childcare vouchers throughout!