Maternity work advice

[newmummytonoah2016]

Hi

I was wondering if anyone knew the ins and outs of when to hand your notice in for leavin

For maternity leave, you have to hand in your MATB1 by 25 weeks.

Sorry that sent to early!

For handing your notice in when leaving your post and not returning after maternity leave. HR had told me at the start of this that I needed to carry on as if I was going on maternity leave by filling in all relevant documents aswell as handing in my notice at the same time. I did this and then I’ve just been told that my notice date needs to be the end of my maternity leave. Is this correct? So by what they are saying I would continue being an employee with them accruing holidays etc and handing in my notice for the end of maternity.

The notice I already handed in had the end of April on it as I assumed that’s my last working day so would be my notice date?

I’m just totally confused now! Anyone have experience on what date you put if you know for certain you aren’t returning to work and have to hand your notice in? I’ve made it clear on my maternity document I won’t be returning to post, so I won’t get paid the company additional maternity. So I don’t see what gain it is to me or them for me to put the end date of maternity as my notice date as I’ll just be receiving SMP throughout anyway.

Thanks if you stuck to the end of that! Hoping for some more sense from HR in the next day or so!

I suppose the advantage is that you accrue holiday which is presumably paid at your normal work rate?

That’s what I gathered would happen. Just strange they would advice that isn’t it as it’s costing them more.

SMP is paid through your company, so you would have to be employed by them to continue to receive it, even if you aren't getting any enhancements. Otherwise if they accept your notice date before your SMP entitlement ends you would have go through the process of applying for Maternity Allowance, which isn't paid by them. They are actually doing you a favour and you can tag any unused leave on the end to get paid for that too. So work out the date of return plus any leave and that is your end date I think. But HR would need to clarify this. Every company is different.

That makes sense! Thank you for that explanation. I’ve contacted HR this morning and they’ve clarified I need to put the date I would have been returning from maternity on my notice. Thank you!