Can you "work" on maternity leave?

[Freddiecat]

I have a normal sort of job (i.e. employed by a company) and am due to start maternity leave in June. At that point I will start receiving statutory maternity pay. As my job will probably not exist in this part of the country soon - well it doesn't now TBH - I will be taking my full 12 months maternity leave and then in all liklihood resigning at the end.

A friend who works for himself has said he has some casual work he could offer me. It's all above board tax-wise but I'd be self-employed working from home on an ad hoc basis.

Whilst I am still receiving my £100 a week then I am probably not interested as it'll tide us over and I will be spending my time with the children.

However once the maternity pay stops then this might be quite interesting. The baby should be sleeping through by then and I'm happy to do a couple of hours work in the evenings by that point.

Thing is if I'm on extended maternity leave (or even ordinary) - can I work for someone else? My employer need not know but I will have to declare it for tax purposes. I don't want to resign from my job until I absolutely have to. There is a slim chance my job may exist in this part of the country next year and I am keeping my record of employment continous which gives me some scant benefit.

thats a hard one ecause in one sense yes you could because its not dictated that you can have another job ike your a fire person or something but on the other hand no because it would be like taking a sicky to work somewhere else i think your best bet would be to contact the tax office and see where you stand in the way of working part time while on maternity leave
hth

Well Freddiecat I think your employer would know as it would be reported in your tax details wouldn't it?

Not sure about that.

I think it would depend on whether your employer would be OK with you doing it if you were still actually working for them - I know I've had contracts in the past where any other empoyment has had to be passed by the company first. I do know you are not allowed to work whilst in receipt of statuory benefits - because the government re-imburses your employer for them.

I'm sorry to say that if you start work you are technically resuming from matenity leave and as such your employer could require you to return to work under your contract of employment.

I understand your concerns re finances etc, however if your role is to cease to exist in the future you are entitled to redundancy pay (subject to length of service etc), therefore I would strongly recommend not resigning !!!! I would suggest discussing this with your HR Department further.

No unfortunately I would not get redundancy pay. My contract states I should be able to work anywhere they want me to. My "base location" is in London where I used to live (in an office I have never visited) but the HQ is in Portsmouth. When I moved here 3 years ago I knew that the position here would not last forever and I've made it clear to my employer that I would not consider relocating or working away from home. They in return have made it clear that if I refused to do that I would be in breach of contract and would have to resign or take the job offered. It has however been subtly suggested that I apply to work from home under the new flexible working laws a few months before I am due to finish maternity leave. Apparently they'd find it hard to turn me down but I also think they'd find it hard to keep me fully occupied.

Oh well - shall have to tell my friend no for the mean time. I might talk to the tax office though about the possibility of doing evening-type work once I stop receiving the benefits. Would also be upfront with my employer about it.

Freddiecat - yes you can, but it has to be outside of your normal contracted working hours, so evenings should be OK.
I took extended, unpaid mat leave when ds1 was born and worked in a supermarket 2 nights per week to make ends meet. I couldn't work during the contracted hours (9-5) of my normal job, as that would have created a conflict. The HR office advised me of this, and it was a well-known media company so I'm confident the advice was spot on.
Basically, when you're on mat leave you can do what you want outside of your contracted hours, just as you would do if you were actually at work. So you can tell your employer if you want to as technically its just a second job.

I came on specifically to ask this very question! I work fulltime, and am currently applying to do some teaching next year, in the evenings, which my boss is fine about. It isn't exactly paid, but I'd get some book tokens as a thank you (all above board tax wise). But I may (fi things pan out) be on maternity leave for the time I'd be teaching....I'd quite happily do two hours teaching a week in an evening over my mat leave, but am worried that if I'm not allowed to I;ll be leaving them in the lurch - in which case I won't apply (or will tell them I'm trying) to be above board. So I need to know if this is OK. Its the govt.benefit thing that worries me - will my employer decide I shouldn't be doing any work and not pay me?? Does anyone have a link to any tax or benefits office info on this one, so I have something in writing to flourish at them if they get bolshy (as they tend to about mat leave things apparently - not my boss, but the HR people)?

Freddiecat, I can't answer the original question but you may still be entitled to redundancy. I worked for a company that shut the office I worked in, and wanted us all to relocate to central London (would be a 90 minute commute). Our contracts said we had to work wherever the company chose. We got some lawyers onto it and the clause in the contract was deemed unreasonable and we all got redundancy. If you have always worked in the one office your case is quite good I think (ie the mobility clause in your contract may be seen to be there just so your employers can dodge the redundancy law). Mobility clauses are only legal if they are applied in a way that is feasible for the employee.

Actually, think I've just found what I'm looking for: at
www2.dti.gov.uk/er/individual/mat-pl958.htm
it says that if you work for more than one employer you can exercise your maternity rights separately in respect of each employer, which I assume means that you don't have to take the same amount of time off etc from each. So that would fit with the idea that so long as you aren't in the same hours, you can do another job on maternity leave - if you could have both jobs on the go, you could have one going whilst being on maternity leave from the other.

Hi Freddiecat,
YES you can definitely work as a self-employed person whilst receiving Statutory Maternity Pay. I actually wrote to the Inland Revenue to ask them about this and got a letter back from them saying yes you can! This was at the end of April 2003. The letter didn't mention anything about only being allowed to work certain hours. And if you're working from home, how would they know anyway?

EXCELLENT! thanks very much!

Zerub - I don't think that would work for me as in the 5 years I've been working for this company I've worked on loads of different customer sites!