I will try to be brief as there is a long history with my current employers and problems with HR. Basically, I started my maternity leave on 28th March 2023 (still awaiting baby’s arrival at 41+3 and feeling pretty fed up!). Before I left there was a big question mark over whether our NHS fixed term contract would be renewed or not. Lots of people resigned and/or found other jobs because of the stressful handling of everything. I wasn’t able to do this because I was too pregnant and relying them on paying my maternity pay. Thankfully, it was renewed for another 3 years and our team were given notification of this in February.
We sold our house in January and moved in with my mother whilst we try to secure another property. To say it’s been stressful living in a single room with my toddler, partner, dog and heavily pregnant would be an understatement. Please don’t get me wrong, I am incredibly grateful to my mother for helping us out but she has a long, complex relationship of mental health issues and is very vulnerable so I end up doing a lot of caring for my mother and autistic brother and it’s more of a mutually beneficial arrangement for now (I won’t bore people with the details). We planned to be here until baby is born whilst we try to secure a house of our own nearby.
We have now found a house we both love, within budget and even better the vendor has agreed to break the chain on the agreement that we complete quickly. We have agreed with bank to port our previous mortgage terms over (saving us thousands with today’s rates) as well as returning our early repayment charge of £3000. So far so good. Apart from my employers have still not issued me with a renewed employment contract and have told me that it’s likely to be weeks or even months (!!!) before this gets RAG approval and I can receive any proof of employment. I work in a pretty senior role in NHS mental health trust and have had multiple issues with HR during this time which have really shocked me. When I returned from my first mat leave I wasn’t paid for 4 months because they ‘lost’ my forms and thought I had left. I was forced to issue a formal complaint before I finally received my money. I was supposed to receive a pay increment during maternity leave, but didn’t and am still chasing this now for reimbursement with payroll (18 months later). They also forgot to take student loan or pension contributions from my maternity pay so I was landed with a huge tax bill of £1800 out of my first payslip which was basically the entire thing! Ergh.
My old employment contract officially ended on 31st March 2023. My understanding is that it’s my right to have an official employment contract with them, whether I’m on maternity leave or not so I’m not sure why it’s taking so long? Waiting for months will definitely lose us this house and our current Mortgage Agreed in Principle. I’m very stressed about the whole thing and don’t know how to progress things. My experience of dealing with HR has really been awful and it’s got me feeling really low about how we’re ever going to purchase a place of our own during this next year.
I’ve emailed head of Department as well as HR multiple times over the past few weeks stressing the urgency of the situation, but they haven’t even responded to me. I’m now on maternity leave and I’m concerned that as soon as baby arrives I'm not going to have the headspace to be chasing this up. Can anyone help with similar experiences or help clarify what rights are here?