Enhanced mat pay repayment

[CHGri]

Hello all,

Would really appreciate your advice on a EMP question. I'll try to keep the explanation brief!

My fiancé and I are looking to buy a house (necessarily just outside London due to budget

and must be south for family reasons). However, I work in a north London school. I am also hoping to be pregnant in the next year, perhaps going on mat leave at the end of the 2026 summer holidays (if that pans out!)

Thameslink means a few places south are doable commute-wise, just about of I spend end of pregnancy on holiday anyway 🤞 I would also plan to not return at end of mat leave as a long commute + teaching + baby = madness. My contract and school's maternity policy don't mention anything about needing to return to work for a set time re keeping EMP. However I know some people get forms right before mat pay.

I don't want to commute to a school ages away if I'm going to end up with the same mat pay as a new school so I'm wondering if any teachers have experience of this? It's a way away but it might affect where we move if I decide to just find a new school that's much closer to somewhere south!

Thank you ❤️

What you can do is choose to get the EMP on return to work rather than on Mat leave so you don’t have to pay it back if you leave.
I would have had to return for 13 weeks (hols could be included in this) to get the enhanced pay (on the same number days as I was working before: it would have been longer had I gone down to less days) but I chose not to.

So you mean you’re wondering if you should stay at your current school and commute or if you should work in a new school nearer your home? One thing I’d caution against is that you usually need to have been working for an employer for at least six months by 15 weeks before the expected week of confinement but it can be 12 months. So make sure you know a new school’s policy before you get pregnant or you could end up without any enhanced pay.

Most employers say you need to work three months after maternity leave to not have to pay the enhanced pay back. If the policy isn’t clear then can you ask your HR team these questions?

Finally, beware of massive levels of redundancy recently. You’ll be more at risk of this if you’re a newer member of staff. I’ve ended up losing my job while pregnant and now I’ll only get maternity allowance from the government. I think you won’t be at much risk of redundancy but it’s never impossible in this day and age. So plan with your partner what you’d do without your income if it came to it.

Oh but something else I’d say is that I’ve ended up glad I lost my job as there’s no pressure to return from maternity (I’ve just got a little summer temp job as it’s all I could get so I’ll have nothing to go back to). I’m also grateful because I was really unwell at the start of pregnancy and it was good not having a job. If you’re planning on not going back anyway, could you just leave before going on maternity leave? As long as you can afford it.

As a pp says, it may be longer than three months that you’d have to go back if you dropped your hours. It sounds unsustainable. Maternity allowance from the government is about £800 a month for nine months and you’ll qualify if you’ve worked 26/66 weeks before your baby is born. So make sure you time it right and you’ll get that money and not need to pay it back.

Thank you guys! My issue with accepting that I won't get EMP if I don't return is that I could get the same statutory payments at a new school that's closer to where we might move south of London. I'm happy to just have statutory payments, but if that's all I'll get from my current school if I don't go back, then I might as well find a closer school and delay trying by a bit to qualify for statutory payments.

I don't know if it's revealing my hand too much to ask if there are any mat pay repayment clauses? I could ask HR if there are any other terms, forms or requirements related to maternity but then they still could send a form later asking to agree to repayment, in which case I would've moved by then.. wouldn't want to create bad blood by insisting on not repaying in order to make months of a long commute worthwhile!

If you know you’re not going back just keep the extra pay to the side and then hand it back when asked, then you won’t need to go back to work.

make sure you look into shared parental leave too, where you “go back to work” to get paid in full over the holidays. I’ve recently started Mat leave and have sacrificed some of my enhanced pay for SPL pay, as it made financial sense to get the 8 week hol in full pay rather that 8 weeks of 50% pay.

Not sure if this works as I was private sector but I was asked to pay back EMP and I just didn’t. They wrote me a snarky/ threatening letter but then didn’t take any action.

Take the enhanced pay and put it in a savings account. If you don’t go back you can hand the money back. Easy

Teachers' service travels with them from one school to the next (in state schools) so you will likely have maternity leave/pay rights if you move. Just ask before you accept any offer whether your continuous service transfers across.

Do be aware though as stated above this is only state schools and doesn't apply to academies even if they follow burgundy book.

Only if they are in the same locality, you would effectively be starting over if you moved from one council to another