Holidays or maternity leave when baby is born?

[Bluewhitefloral]

Hi everyone,

Just wondering if there is a time limit where you have to start mat leave after your baby is born?

I work full time and have a rough due date of 1st October ‘23 (having due date scan next week). My holiday year runs from 1st April to 31st March and I have 30 days holiday entitlement per year. I get stat maternity pay at the company I work for. I want to spend as much time off with baby as financially possible and wanted to do the following:

Save my 2023-24 holidays which start in March this year. Work up until due date, then take my 30 days holiday entitlement so I get full pay for my first few weeks off with baby. I estimated that this should take me to about 11th November. Then I start my maternity leave when my holidays run out (so 12th Nov), get 90% of my pay for 6 weeks, then the £157 per week until I go back to work.

I have put this across to my manager who has said he does not believe it is possible to take my yearly holiday entitlement as soon as baby is born as really that would be classed as the start of my maternity leave if I did not wish to start it prior to the due date. He believes my only options are to either take some of my holiday entitlement before the due date then start my mat leave/pay on due date, or save my holidays for the year and take them after my mat leave ends before I start back at work (carrying them over into the next holiday year if necessary). However, he is going to take further advice on this - I work for a small company and there has not been an office pregnancy for years!

I would rather not take holidays before the baby is born as these will just be wasted days off for me - I would much rather spend them with baby and work up to the due date if I can. It’s a desk job and I work part of the week at home, with only a short commute on office days. I would also rather be paid as much as possible during the beginning of the time off work rather than using my holidays at the end of my mat leave just due to my financial situation.

I am sorry for the long post and hope it makes sense. I am struggling to find any official advice online on this so was hoping to hear from any Mums who have been in the same boat.

Your maternity leave has to start when baby is born I'm afraid! You can do paid KIT days. Your best option is to take the leave before you come back and essentially end your maternity leave a month early and get full pay for it as holiday.

The PP is correct as currently sorting out my leave from July. If you haven't choose to start mat leave early before your due date, it automatically starts the day they are born. 90% for 6 weeks and then stat pay for a further 33 weeks. Your annual leave will still accrue when you are on leave. My plan is to take a weeks A/L and then start my Mat leave the Monday of the week she is due and then I will likely some A/L at the end of my leave also as I'm only planning to take the 9 months while it is paid.

Your maternity leave has to start the day after your baby is born. But you can use holiday before or usually carry it over to the next year’s leave allowance and then use before you go back to work.

@Bluewhitefloral most companies allow you to carry over only small amount of holiday for next holiday period, in my company it's 5 days, the rest have to be taken before your due date. Maternity has to legally start with your due date and can't be broken with holiday then back on holiday again. Unless your company allows you to carry over all your holidays you would have finish maternity early to be able to add it at the end of your holiday period.

• back on maternity i meant

@Bluewhitefloral all your maternity policy should be in your contract, if not then your HR should give you printed version of your company policy. There is no general rule apart of SMP, because lots of companies offer different packages. Some lucky women get 6 months full pay, I have 3 months full pay, 3 months 50% and 3 SMP. All that specific details and entitlements plus how to use maternity, holiday is in that policy. Don't take it for word, they have to give it to you on paper as an official policy.

@Bluewhitefloral no you have to take maternity the moment the baby is born, or if you set it earlier. Minimum 2weeks.

There might be a loop hole for you- called shared paternity pay. With ShPP it’s designed so you can give some leave/stat pay to your other half. However also with ShPP you can break this up (unlike maternity) into up to three blocks. Your employer needs to agree to the times etc. You still have to take the first two weeks off as maternity leave before you’re allowed to switch it to ShPP. Also for my work it’s 8weeks notice to switch onto ShPP.

So I plan to give 6 weeks of the year to my DH. Then I’m not sure yet whether to take the first 3+ months, then switch to ShPP ‘go back to work’ (but take 5weeks AL) and then go back onto ShPP/ShPL for the remaining time. Or to switch to ShPP after a few months but just stay off and put the AL at the end. Technically my AL will be covering the ~6 weeks I’m giving to my DH, but I’ll be paid full pay for it.

Also for my work I’m allowed to carry all the AL from this year over to next year (mines oct-sept and I’m due this May). It’s a special case due to maternity for my work.

It could be worth asking them about ShPP and also AL carried over due to maternity.

@Bluewhitefloral legally the latest your Statutory Maternity Leave (SML) and Pay (SMP) can start is the day your baby is born. The two weeks following the birth are protected and you must be on SML.

You are entitled to carry over all your intake leave to the next leave year, so can take it after your SML and before you return to work.

My DH doesn’t know when he wants to take those 6 weeks yet, not straight away. I don’t have to time my leave to his, we can be off at the same time. It’s just shortening my leave from 52 weeks down to 46weeks in total. Hence why I said I’m going to bridge it back up with AL (and get pay for that bit).

@Foreversearch it's not true that you are allowed to carry over all your annual leave for next holiday period as general rule. Every company sets its own rules regarding this, it's all in individual company maternity policy.

@Moni81 employers do have to allow leave to be carried over to the next holiday year if you can’t take it because of maternity leave.

This is from ACAS:

You should usually take all your statutory holiday in the holiday year. But if you're not able to use it because you're on maternity leave for all or most of the year, your employer must allow you to carry it over.

If your contract gives you more holiday than the statutory amount, your employer may allow:

carrying over some into the next holiday year
payment instead ('in lieu') of taking it

Whether you carry over any holiday to the next holiday year could depend on how far through the current holiday year you are when you return to work after maternity leave.

For example, if you're going to take 6 months' maternity leave and will be returning to work with 1 month left of the holiday year, you should arrange with your employer to make sure you can take your holiday in that month.

If your employer does not allow you to take your holiday entitlement because of your sex, pregnancy or maternity, it could be discrimination.

@Bluewhitefloral if you can afford it, its worth having a bit of flexibility in when you start and end your mat leave. You don’t have to tell your employer your return date (legally they have to assume it is the full year).

You can bring the start date closer with 28 days notice and end it early with 8 weeks notice. It’s hard to know at this stage how the later bit of your pregnancy will go - you might just want to have a bit of a brain break and prep for baby and opportunity to nap if you aren’t sleeping great.

@UnicornNarwhale but in OP situation her holiday period runs from 1st of April until the end of March. She is due on 1st of October, there is 7 months before birth to take holiday for 2023.

Sorry, 6 months lol

@Moni81 it is pregnancy and maternity discrimination to impose a requirement on a pregnant employee you don’t impose on any other employees. If you permit employees to apply for and take their leave at any point during the year you cannot require a pregnant employee to take their leave before their maternity leave starts.

@Foreversearch it's not discriminatory if after coming back from maternity it's officially new holiday year. Company doesn't state when exactly to take holiday. If you are on maternity leave for 6 months of annual holiday period there is another 6 months to take holiday any time you want. It's under company discretion to allow you to carry over any old holidays for next holiday period. In most companies you will have to take roughly half of entitlement in first half of year and the rest in another half. In case of maternity leave they allow you to take more than you accrued before you leave and most companies will only allow certain amount of days to be carried over. Nothing discriminatory about that, if everyone starts to carry over any holidays they want from year to year companies would not be able to run efficiently staffed.

@Moni81 case law (HMRC vs Stringer I think) established if you are absent on sick leave you can carry over a full leave year. This equally applies to maternity leave.

The government website is clear.
www.gov.uk/holiday-entitlement-rights/calculate-leave-entitlement

“Workers on parental or sick leave
If a worker cannot take all of their leave entitlement because they’re already on a different type of leave (for example sick, maternity or parental leave), they can carry over some or all of the untaken leave into the next leave year.

An employer must allow a worker to carry over a maximum of 20 of their 28 days’ leave entitlement if the worker could not take annual leave because they were off sick.”

@Foreversearch yes but OP is not on any sort of leave right now, she works, so she basically has 6 months to take holiday until giving birth in October and going on maternity. Her holiday period runs from April until the end of March ....what is there to not understand😐

@Moni81 the op doesn’t want to take her leave now and she is not required to take it.

You have to start maternity when they are born, I’ve used 2 weeks of my annual leave before the due date, and then I’ve got 3 weeks to carry over and use at the end of my maternity - along with bank holidays it should mean I get paid in full for my last month “off” they legally have to let you carry it over even if they encourage you to use it before.

@Hatscats you know you accrue leave whilst on mat leave not just BH.

Yep, I’ll have the rest of my allowance to use when I am back - forgot about that!

@Hatscats good for you.

Thank you everyone for answering! That sucks but if they’re the rules then it is what it is! I will find out how many holidays I can carry over to next year and save as many as I can x

@Bluewhitefloral no need to ask how many days you can carry over, the government website is clear you can carry over as much as you want.