Question about maternity pay when you're on a civil service FTA

[lizardqueenie]

Recently started working back in the civil service and am on a 2 year fixed term contract. At some point, probably within the time of this contract and depending upon the health of my DH we would like to try for a DC no.2.

The maternity benefits for civil servants in my department are 6 months leave at full pay, 3 months at statutory rate and then 3 months at nil pay.

However, I am not sure what the situation would be if you were a fixed term employee? Also whether your maternity leave would end if your contract ended whilst you were on mat leave? Its a bit tricky for me to find this information out at work, not the sort of thing I really want to go to my manager with, or the union reps in the office (i am not really sure how discreet some of the particular individuals would be with questions like this). We don't have a HR dept per say, more like a shared services team in a call centre who deal with pay etc.

Any ideas about how i could find this out discreetly?

Thank you

Your best bet is to ring the HR service centre or look at the FAQs on the intranet. Not something your manager or PCS rep would really be able to confirm.

When some of my collegues took voluntary redundancy, my pregnant colleague was paid her maternity leave as a lump sum, plus the holiday pay / bank holidays she had accrued. The same happened to another pregnant colleague who accepted an early severance payment.

It should be on your HR Internet site, in the maternity leave policy.

Otherwise, ring the HR Service Centre. They will know, and won't care who you are. No problem to ring them unless you work in the HR Service Centre!

I was in a similar situation a few years ago but got a permanent post just before getting pregnant. From what I can remember you're eligible for same maternity benefits as permanent staff once you've been in post a year (either by the time you're leaving for maternity leave or at point you have to tell employer which i think is around 25 weeks... Can't remember which) The info should be in your hr manual/faqs on intranet.

The thing that was always unclear was happened if contract expired whilst on ML. I could never get a straight answer on this and neither could my colleague who went on ML 9 months before her FTA was due to expire. In the end I think her contract was extended but don't think this was arranged till she'd been on ML for a while.

Hope that helps.

Phone the SSC - they should be able to clarify the position. You'll probably have identify yourself, but you can always say that you're ringing because a colleague or someone in your team has asked and you're trying to find out the answer.

Thank you all very much.

Yes the full benefits after a year does ring a bell actually but I agree the thing that isn't clear is what happens if your contract expires whilst you are on mat leave. Whether they do extend it or that's the end of it all.

Hmm looks like a all to Ssc is in order on behalf of a "friend"!