Can I be paid for my unused holiday whilst I'm on SMP ?

[Bakedbeansaretheworkofthedevil]

I won't be able to use take all of my holiday days before I start maternity leave (holiday years run in line with calendar year and my maternity leave will span part of this year and part of next) and my employer has offered to buy these holiday days from me whilst I'm on leave. I'm happy for them to do this, but will it affect my entitlement to SMP if it's paid mid maternity leave ?

I will be returning to work at the end of leave and the company has an existing policy of buying back unused holiday from staff if the business needs demand it. Would it make a difference if the payment was classed as a bonus instead of payment in lieu of holiday ?

Links to any HMRC or government guidance would be most appreciated so that I can reference them to my employer

TIA

No it shouldn't - I believe that they need to pay it right at the start of your maternity leave though.

Legally, they have to allow all staff to be able to take the legal minimum paid leave - 5.6 weeks pa - and aren't allowed to 'buy back' any below that.

This link from gov.uk may help:
www.gov.uk/holiday-entitlement-rights

Flowery is much more knowledgeable about this sort of thing though!!

You could always 'convert' your last couple of weeks (or however long) of maternity leave on smp or no pay to annual leave before you return. I did that and I work for an organisation that specialises in employment rights, so I assume that's a legit way of doing it!

I can't see why it would affect your SMP. As others have said, this will only apply to any holiday you get over and above the statutory minimum anyway, so presumably it's not a huge number.

You have a few options - you can "go back" early as rallytog suggests, and just be on leave, or you can extend your time off beyond your maternity leave and tack holiday on to the end, or you could use Keeping in Touch days of which you have 10 available, and just be on holiday for those days rather than working.

But I can't think of any reason why a one-off payout of holiday entitlement over and above statutory minimum would affect your SMP.

Many thanks. I think I'm trying to be too clever as I was hoping to get them paid in the 2014/2015 tax year as I'll be standard rated for the year whereas I'll creep into the higher rate in 2015/2016. Unfortunately the tax year end is part way though my mat leave and the number of days left to take is fairly high (and I won't have taken the legal minimum before mat leave starts) so I think I'll have to tack them on to the end of mat leave and suck up the tax difference.

If you want the days to be paid this year, could you plan to start your mat leave on your due date and use up annual leave right before this? Obviously wil only help if you're planning on finishing work a week or so before your due date, haven't already planned to do this, and of course assumes your baby won't come early (in which case I'd have thought the leave would be carried into the next year anyway), but might help otherwise.

Thanks, yes I'm planning on using as much holiday as I can before I start mat leave but will still have a fair bit to roll forward to next year. DC1 was early so I suspect I could have even more days than I'm currently hoping to use if DC2 follows suit.