Maternity allowance

[Raindrop87]

I need to complete my maternity allowance form this week - just out of interest, how long do they take to come back to you? Are there delays due to covid?

I sent mine off first class on the Thursday, had a text on the Monday to say it was being processed and I would hear within 4 weeks. I then had a change in circumstances (my temp job came to an end sooner so I wanted to start mat leave on an earlier date than I had put down). I phoned up Friday last week and the person said they were currently working on the requests from the end of July (I think I received my confirmation the first week of August so mine wasn't too far behind). The person very kindly offered to work on my application on Monday herself, and by Wednesday this week I'd received my letter to say it had all been approved. All in all it was less than 3 weeks, but would've been a bit longer if I hadn't phoned to make changes. I can't imagine it would've taken too much longer though.

That's good, doesn't sound too bad, I was worried it might be really long delays!

I sent mine off on the Monday I was 26 weeks (33 now), got a text by the Thursday and I had my letter out by the following week. The longest bit for me was that they had to contact HMRC to see how much NI I needed to pay to get full MA.

HMRC were supposed to get back to me within 10 days but didnt before I went away for a week at end of July, when I got back I still didnt have HMRC letter but I did have a new letter from MA department saying I actually did qualify for full amount. The HMRC letter to tell me this took another week on top of that.

So MA work much quicker than other places. I got the full decision even with a delay from HMRC in just under 4 weeks.

That's good to know, I need to pay some extra NI to get the full amount and was thinking that might delay things!