Antenatal care and annual leave

[woollycat]

According to
www.gov.uk/working-when-pregnant-your-rights

"Employers must give pregnant employees time off for antenatal care and pay their normal rate for this time off. "

Does this time off come out of my annual lea e or is it on top if it? I have an appointmemt at 3pm and I need to travel to it for an hour, so realistically that's my afternoon gone. I want to understand if I need to take half a day off out of my annual leave, or the employer should just allow it.

Who exactly in HR? Junior or senior?
Do ask if they have a maternity policy and if so whether you can see it.
And contact the Acas helpline, then you can tell them you've got advice from Acas.
They should change their tune after that!

When I was pregnant 3yrs ago with first I was allowed time off for appointment paid however HR did say its 4hrs anything over I had to make time up or take annual leave most companies are the same 4hrs for appointments so maybe this is why ? X

I just called the acas helpline and they said that amy reasonable time off for antenatal appointments should be granted, there is nothing discretionary about it and it does not come out of annual leave. They advised me to put this in writing and mention that I called their helpline, and that the employer can also call the helpline to get the same information. I just can't believe HR got it so wrong.

@KHall84 that sounds really dodgy to me what your HR dept said- while most of my antenatal appointments are local and quite quick, I've had a few scans at a hospital that was hard to get to (1-1.5 hours one way) with long waiting times (I waited 2 hours once!). Add that to the actual appointment time (plus waiting for the report) and it was easily more than 4 hours.

(Dads are allowed to take unpaid leave for up to two appointments, up to 6.5 hours per appointment)

Awesome. Glad Acas confirmed what we all thought. I'm sure the email they advised you to send will do the trick!

(It's annoyingly that none of the online info specifies that it should not be taken from annual leave!)

@paperplant to be honest I did have to travel but was always within the 4hrs apart from once although I dont work there any more and self employed now which is a lot better this pregnancy as I have more time to relax but the employer were never the greatest when it came to appointments lol

Glad ACAS cleared it up. My appointments used to always be mid afternoon on a Friday with a 1.5hr commute each way so I would leave at lunch and then not come back as if I did I would be leaving straight away. Never had any issues.

100% they should just be paying you and nothing to do with annual leave.

@woollycat great to hear!
Sorry to hear HR have been so weird about it, hope it's just down to not knowing as opposed to trying to screw you / pregnant employees over!

My employer was fantastic with appointments. My manager actually told me about aquanatal classes that were at the swimming pool nearby and told me to go if I wanted to as it was all part of my antenatal care. I didn't have to pay back any time or take it out of my annual leave. That's just barbaric! What if you had no annual leave left and needed extra scans? Are they saying they wouldn't allow you to attend?

Annual leave is time you are already allocated as time off, which you generally get to choose when. If the law intended you to use annual leave for antenatal care, then surely there would be no need for the law? The law is there to specify that time for antenatal care is in addition to annual leave.