Statutory Materninty Pay

[MrsWhirling]

Hi ladies,

Looking for a bit of advice re: materning leave, which I am currently on.

I gave birth in Nov and opted only to take my company's maternity package of 6 months full pay. Does anyone know if it is too late now to take up statutory maternity pay? It looks like I will need to extend my time off. Thanks xx

You should be able to take a year off work no matter what maternity package your employer offers. So could extend you may leave and take the 6 months full pay?

Or have I misunderstood?

Mat leave

Are you sure it wasn't the other way around?
Statutory maternity pay is just that: statutory. Your employer does not have an option whether they pay it or not; you are entitled to it and they have to pay it. It is yours to keep regardless of whether you return or not.

A company enhanced scheme, on the other hand, may be repayable depending on your Contract of employment. It is usually this scheme that you have the option whether or not you take or leave until your return (especially if you are not sure whether you are going to return). Normally there isa period of time that you have to return to be entitled to it and you a lot of employers give you the option to have it paid to you in a lump sum after you have fulfilled this requirement.

Basically I want to now have 6 months off full pay which is my company's pack and also take the 6 months statutory mat pay the gov provide. Because I didn't opt for that at the start I wasn't sure if I would lose the statutory pay x

You can have a maximum of 39 weeks maternity pay. So if your company pays you in full up to 6 months, call it 24 weeks for arguments sake, you can then only get 15 weeks statutory maternity pay after that period of full pay ends. You can take a year off on mat leave but the last 13 weeks are on nil pay unless your company pays you for the full year (rare but not unheard of).
Does that make sense?

And you need to give them 8 weeks notice that you've changed your mind, but you are definitely still entitled to the additional 3 months stat pay.

Thank you ladies, amazing advice. I'll give my manager a bell on Monday xx

The other thing to say is that when your company says you get full pay, what they mean is that they'll make up the statutory mat pay so it equals your full pay (so say mat pay is £100 per week and full pay is £300, you're getting £100 plus £200 from your employer) if that makes sense. At the end of the 6 months, your employer just stops paying their £200, but the £100 statutory mat pay continues till you've had 39 weeks in total. As others have said, you can have a full 52 weeks off, but the lasy 13 weeks are completely unpaid.