Should i take voluntary redundancy or statutary maternaty pay??

[chloeclover]

i have worked for my company for 8 years and am planning to leave in July to have a baby. i do not intend to come back to work. i have just found out that the company is taking some cost saving measures by making redundancys and have asked if i would be intersted in voluntary redundancy as they know i am not planning to return to work.

does anyone know if this would be better for me financially or not???

Im only going on why I know (not a lot here) but not without knowing how much they would pay you in redunancy money, and how much they add to your maternity pay (if anything) no! I'm guessing that if you arent going back at the end, then you wouldnt get any extras on top of SMP anyway (I believe you have to go back for 3 months to qualify for that - please anyone correct me if wrong)

so, based on DWP statement:
'If you satisfy all the conditions you will be entitled to SMP for a maximum period of 39 weeks.
The amount you get depends on your earnings. The first 6 weeks of SMP are earnings related and you will get a weekly rate equal to 90 per cent of your average weekly earnings (there is no upper limit). The remaining 33 weeks are paid at the weekly standard rate SMP of £128.73 (from 3 April 2011) or the earnings related rate if this is less than standard rate SMP.'

So if you ONLY get Statuatory, then its £4248.09 + (90% of your pay x 6)

Only you can find out if thats less or more than taking redundancy

Depends how much they are offering you to go and when they want you to leave?

SMP is £102 a week for 39 weeks so you need to sit and work out how much each option will bring you

Depends on what maternity package you get from your firm. My firm offers 6 months full money then statutory for next 3 months. If you don't go back you have to pay back the extra money received on top of SMP (after tax). Otherwise I have to go back for a year! If I was to be made redundant or take voluntary redundancy they would probably tell me not to pay the money back if already on ML but if still at work, depending on redundancy package I would probably opt for redundancy payment as would get lump sum without hassle of paying money back.

You need to check your contract and find out whether redundancy and maternity at your company are statutory or according to contract. It also depends on your rate of pay, and whether you think the company would be prepared to offer you more to be one of the redundancies.

Stat redundancy is maximum £430 for each year you worked there, so you would get maximum £3440. However rather than making someone redundant who would like to stay, they would probably like to pay you off. In that case you could negotiate a better settlement.

As the PP states, Stat maternity is 90% of your earnings for 6 weeks, then stat of £128 for 33 weeks. Without knowing what your earn we cannot calculate what you would get.

For me, mat pay is better than stat redundancy and I earn the London average.

I do not believe there are any returning to work requirements for SMP, but check with the govt website.

I have worked out that i would get about £6000 for stat mat pay + my 6 weeks at 90%.

Surley even if i took a redundancy package of less than this it would be better to have it as a lump sum to pay off debts before baby is here.

also does anyone know what i would then get in terms of job seekers allowance / benefit as i have never been out of work and dont really know what if anything i would be entitled to??

You need to get them to detail what you will get. When I took voluntary redundancy just before I went on maternity leave, they still had to pay me statutory mat pay anyway, so it definitely worked out a lot better (even though I gave up company mat pay which was better terms). When would the redundancy happen? Would you still be in the qualifying period for mat pay?

You should be able to ask them to work it out for you without any obligation