Maternity Leave / Annual Leave Confusion

[LearningFast]

Hi Ladies,

Can any of you help me to make sense of maternity leave and holiday entitlement?

My annual leave year at work runs from April to April, and we are not allowed to carry leave over from one year to the next.

My due date is 24th August and all being well I would like to finish work about 3 weeks before that on Friday 29th July.

It will be a struggle to use up a full years worth of annual leave between 1st April and 29th July (I get 7 weeks in total) so how should I play things in this situation? Can I take the 3 weeks before the baby is born as annual leave, and then start my official maternity leave then?

All advice gratefully received!

Theoretically you should be able to take the full 7 weeks annual leave immediately before your maternity leave starts, if you want to.

Talk to your HR department at work, or to your line manager. Different companies have different policies.

I know that cos my work pays my maternity pay, and I am still entitled to all my benefits inc holiday, I can take all this years holiday as part of my maternity, so I am planning on taking 3 weeks holiday, then take my 12 weeks @ 90% then start on my SMP (how are you supposed to cope on that!!!!)

but speak to HR, they should normally send you a pack telling you all this stuff when you tell them you are pregnant.

OUr leave year also runs April to March. however, in my case, I will only get leave from April until I go off on maternity leave then I will continue to accumulate leave, but it would be started from scratch and accumulated while I'm on mat leave. So if I was you, I'd be entitled to a prorata'd amount of 7 weeks for the time period 1 April to 24 August (or whenever my mat leave started). Then during my mat leave I'd accumulate leave at the standard rate, which I can take at the end.

Hi

Not sure the size of company you work for and whether they have an HR/Personnel department or a Maternity Policy.

Legally you are entitled to accrue all contractual and statutory holiday during your leave. You can get guidance off the UGov website or give ACAS a call as they provide free advice over the phone.

If your company doesn't have a maternity policy then I would recommend that you speak to your line manager and ask them to clarify how they will deal with your holiday entitlement - you can take the 3 weeks before your due date (EWC) as holiday, however if your baby arrives early then your maternity leave will start automatically and they will still owe you for the holiday that you were unable to take.

You may be able to agree with them that they will either make a one-off payment to you at the end of the holiday year or allow you to carry it forward to the next holiday year, this is a good option as it means you could take holiday at the end of your paid leave so you don't miss out too much financially.

Good luck!

Thanks everyone, your comments are interesting and helpful.

I work for a small charity and we do not have an HR department and unbelievably the maternity policy is only available when you ask for it (and I haven't told my employers yet about the pregnancy).

However, after reading through your posts I have had a look at the DirectGov website and found this paragraph:

"Holiday entitlement
You build up all your entitlements to paid holiday through all of your Statutory Maternity Leave. This is even if your employment contract says you are entitled to more than the statutory minimum.

You can add holiday to the beginning or end of your Statutory Maternity Leave. You may not be able to carry over untaken holiday entitlement if your Statutory Maternity Leave goes over two holiday years. It is often best to take this at the beginning of your Statutory Maternity Leave."

So, it sounds like I need to book myself lots of holiday between April and the end of July! I am planning on telling my employers after the results of our dating / nuchal scan are available, which should be next week. I'll then see what they say about annual leave and whatever the conclusion will get it in writing just in case...

Shuv66 - if I can get my employer to agree that they will pay me for the unused annual leave at the end of the leave year that would be fantastic. Thanks for putting the idea in my head. I'll ask them and see how they respond!

LearningFast- as others have said you should be able to take those final 3 weeks as annual leave. I similarly had to use up an entire year's worth of leave before I went as we're not allowed to carry it over.

Also for about my final 6 weeks at work I used 1-2 annual leave days each week to shorten my working week. If you are planning on working till 37 weeks this is a great way of using up leave and making your life more tolerable once you are huge! (oh and it means you can do fun stuff like baby shopping :))

And congratulations BTW!