Need some advice about maternity leave..

[MaryIsMyHomegirl]

Hello, i was wondering if anyone has taken 2 maternity leaves in a row? And if so, did you get only 90% of the 124.88 a week for the second one?

im pretty sure you should get 90% of what normal salary should have been if you have been working

I got the 90% no problem but didn't qualify for statutory maternity pay as I hadn't earned enough in the "qualifying period" leading up to the 2nd maternity leave (due to still being on 1st mat leave)

I had to do an application for maternity allowance and did get that (think it was slightly less than SMP but not much difference)

NorkilyChallenged, can i ask, did you take the full year for your first maternity leave? I've been told that you have to be earning more than £97 a week to qualify for SMP, so if you have SMP for the first maternity leave at £124 a week, surely you would be entitled to another full SMP?

Sorry if that sounds a bit confused, i'm just trying to get my head around it all.

And thankyou.

I did take full year off and it was in 2006-7 so before the change in law I think, so was definitely completely unpaid for the last few months.

Your SMP is based on your earnings in (roughly) weeks 18-25 of pregnancy. So if you are on SMP in that period, you will get £124.88 throughout. It doesn't matter what your notional salary is. SMP for the first 6 weeks is actualy 90% of salary or £124, whichever is higher, so you wouldn't get 90% of £124.

This has only come up more often since SMP was extended to 39 weeks really. When it was 26 weeks, you had to conceive almost instantly to stand a shot at full SMP, so it rarely happened.