Maternity Leave Terms

[Wildflower922]

I'm looking at my work (large public sector organisation) maternity leave policy and I was wondering what some of the terms mean, I have worked there for 5 years so I am entitled to the full leave entitlement..I'm just wondering what these mean in terms of pay?

26 weeks ordinary maternity leave plus
26 weeks additional maternity leave plus
18 weeks occupational maternity pay
(If eligible) 39 weeks statutory maternity pay

Any advice greatly appreciated!

It's means you can take the full year but only 18 weeks is enhanced maternity pay.

sorry what does that mean?

There should be a policy document which explains it all! No one here can give you the specifics, but typically you need to separate the leave from the pay.

This reads as:
26 week OML - you need to read up on what happens to other benefits during OML.
Followed by 26 AML - what happens to benefits etc for the second 26 weeks might be different, but in total you can have 52 weeks off. E.g. you might have to start contributing to maintain some benefits after the first 26 weeks.

18 weeks occupational pay (OMP) implies they pay mat pay over and above statutory (SMP) so you get that for 18 weeks.

SMP is up to 39 weeks but it doesn't follow on from OMP, it's from the beginning. The state contribution is normally included in the OMP amount, so be careful not to double count it when budgeting.

So you'd get 18 weeks OMP, followed by 21 weeks SMP, followed by 13 weeks unpaid if you took all of the OML and AML to be off for 52 weeks.

You can Google the amount for statutory Mat pay..it's about 156 a week.

Your policy should say how much occupational pay you'd get for the first 18 weeks (might be your full basic salary the whole time, might be 9 weeks full pay, 9 weeks half pay plus SMP or something along those lines)

If you get any benefits such as company car or car allowance you get to keep those too.