Changing to part-time hours - impact on maternity pay

[babyledweaner]

I'm expecting my second baby in spring next year. I returned to work full-time after DS1, but would like to come back just two days a week after my next maternity leave. For all sorts of reasons, I'd prefer to let work know my intentions before I go on maternity leave. However, I don't fully understand how this will impact on my maternity pay. Can anyone advise specifically on:

1. whether the paid part of my maternity leave would assume that I was still employed on a full-time basis? I'm interested to know if this is the case for both the employer-paid and SMP parts of my maternity leave.

2. whether I accrue leave during this period on the basis of full-time employment, or if leave accrual is based on my new, reduced hours? With DS1, I managed to accrue about six weeks of leave during my maternity leave, and it was very nice to be paid for those last few weeks - I'm just not clear if I could only expect to be paid on a 0.4 basis for this leave period if I was returning part-time.

Any advice would be much appreciated. Many thanks

Just make sure when you agree your changed hours that the effective date for the change is the day you are due back from maternity leave. Your annual leave will then be accrued on your full time basis throughout mat leave. If you plan to take your accrued holiday after the end of mat leave and before returning to the office you could ask for the change of hours to be effective at the beginning of your holiday period. So if you accrue 28 days holiday during your year off maternity leave, then change to 2 days a week before taking the holiday, you could take 14 weeks off. Of course your employer might not fall for that!

SMP will be based on your earnings between weeks 17 and 25 of your pregnancy, so earnings after maternity leave are irrelevant. You'll need to check your employer's maternity policy to find out what rules they have about calculating maternity pay (it will be based on current earnings not post-leave earnings) and about whether you need pay any back.