Maternity Leave / accrued annual leave

[ru53]

I have read a few different websites on this and am seeing conflicting information. Can anyone explain to me in a very simple way whether annual leave accrues during maternity leave and can it be taken over into the next holiday year?

For context I am taking the full year, and didn’t discuss this with my employer before going on maternity leave. I’m the first person in my company to ever to take mat leave (small company male dominated) so they’re not really up to speed on all the ins and outs and neither am I. I probably have 10 days left over from last year, the holiday year runs Jan-Dec and I went on leave in May last year.

It will really depend on your companies Maternity Policy document, could you ask HR to send it to you?

Yes it accrues but I don’t know if it carries over. If your employer doesn’t have a policy I would start by asking if it ok to take your accrued leave on x dates. See how they respond as it is up to them to know the law and apply it.

It accrues while on mat leave, but carrying it over is at your employer's discression so you should have the conversation with them.

How could carrying it over be at the employer's discretion if she's taking the full year?! That makes no sense.
Have a read here. Yes, you can carry it over for when you come back: www.citizensadvice.org.uk/work/maternity-and-parental-rights/check-your-maternity-and-parental-rights/rights-while-pregnant-or-on-maternity-leave/rights-while-youre-on-maternity-leave/

Also, bank holidays also accrue.

A lot of people use some of the accrued holiday to either extend their mat leave over 1 year or to cover the last few months when the pay is basically 0 ( unless your company is really noce and pays extra). Either of the options would have to be agreed with the manager/company as they don't have to allow this.

What will be your childcare situation after finishing mat leave? If it's gonna be nursery/childminder, keep in mind the child will end up ill a lot in the first year. So don't use up everything you accrued as you might need it later.

Good luck and congratulations 😃

Definitely check with them. My company encouraged me to just add it on at the end of maternity leave. I was told I could do that or just use it up over the year or a bit of both. I’d say don’t just tack it on the end unless you have to as I found that there were so many days I had to take off for DC catching nursery illnesses that it would have been handy to have bit of spare leave

In my work place yes that was the case.
The only catch so that you don't have the full year to take it so I would just double check that.

It worked really well because I dropped my hours when I returned but as I was still classed as full time whilst on maternity I accrued the full time annual leave!

It does accrue but lots of places have caveats. Some make you take what you would accrue within your current annual leave year before you finish. Others make you take all your leave before you return from mat leave. Some limit the time frame you have to use it in. So it isn't straight forwards and OP they should have a policy on it.

Your employer has to ensure that you can take your statutory leave, they must either let you carry it over (including bank holidays) or mandate you to take it before your maternity leave starts. Or some combination of the two.
If they direct you to take it before your planned start date, but you end up going on leave early, they must carry it over.
They can mandate when you take the carried over leave, so they could tack it on the end of your leave.
If your maternity leave exactly covers your holiday year you wouldn't have the chance to take it so they would have no alternative to let you take it all.
You'd have to check your company policy for any contractual annual leave, perhaps they might pay you for it, I'm not totally sure how that works legally.

I went back to work on sick leave in the August on sick leave having had 1 year maternity leave. Our holiday year runs jan-dec. When I went back I had nearly all my annual leave pre maternity due to covid Lockdowns I didn't take much, all of my mat leave holiday and I didn't use any to extend my mat leave due to going straight on to sick leave. I had 60+ days leave and had until the end of the next full holiday year to take them. My mat leave was 2020-2021 and I had until Dec 2022 to take the leave.

Thanks everyone, seems like most things it’s not clear cut! I will raise it with work and see what they say.