Owed annual leave when going on maternity leave

[TheCatRules]

I am pregnant and my doctor has signed me off which means my maternity leave will probably have to start earlier than I wanted as I am unlikely to be well enough to return before my due date. I had planned to use up my annual leave in this time as my employer has said I must use it or I will lose it. Can they do this?

There's no reason you can't still use annual leave instead of sick leave, but if you don't want to and the reason you don't use your annual leave is pregnancy/maternity leave, which it would be, your employer can't take it away from you, no.

They can.

You still have to accrue annual leave while you’re off on maternity, but if the deadline for you to take your existing accrued leave is while you’re on maternity and you haven’t used yours up, it’s discretionary as to if they will let you roll it over or not.

As above you should still be able to use your annual leave. Tell them you're starting maternity on x date and x amount of weeks before that you're on annual leave. You'll be on sick leave until your annual leave starts.

If they don't agree to that then ask for your annual leave to be paid. If they sent agree to that I found forwarding a copy of the equality act with the relevant parts about maternity being protected highlighted shits them up enough to stop being tits.

Ignore my earlier post! I was getting confused with statutory leave which can be carried over, and additional leave which might or might not be allowed depending on your workplace and contract

What LaBelle said. If the date by which you have to have used your annual leave falls during your mat leave, then you must either take it before or you risk using it. It is up to your employer whether they are willing to let you carry it over. Your mat leave doesn't need to start until your due date (unless the baby arrives early) so you can take your annual leave tagged on the start of your mat leave.

Thank you for your comments but I am still confused.

www.gov.uk says this If a worker can’t take all of their leave entitlement because they’re already on a different type of leave (for example sick, maternity or parental leave), they can carry over some or all of the untaken leave into the next leave year. An employer must allow a worker to carry over a maximum of 20 of their 28 days’ leave entitlement if the worker couldn’t take annual leave because they were off sick.

So is the above not always correct? In what circumstances do I lose my leave?

Just wondering if this is a first child or if hove been on maternity leave or long term sickness before, as you would lose your leave if it’s not from the most recent holiday year.

Say your holiday year runs from January to December and you had a child in Feb 2017 which meant you were off for most of 2017 on maternity. You could roll your statutory leave from that year into 2018 but not necessarily any additional leave, so you can roll over 20 days.

Let’s say you return to work in Dec 2017, you have your 20 days plus your normal allowance to use in 2018 as you’ve not used these yet.
If you were then having another baby in Feb 2018 and going on maternity leave again, you would lose your 20 days from 2017 rather than being allowed to take those into 2019 as you only get 18 months to use the rolled leave.

Sorry typed this 3 times now!
I did it.
32-36wks off sick. 36-38wks ‘returned to work’ but on annual leave. 38wks + Mat leave.
Needed specific dates on sick note but dr happy to do that.
Hope that helps

The information you found on the gov.uk website is correct.

Thank you for your advice.

This is my second pregnancy and it has been full of complications so I have spent a large part in hospital and nearly all of it off work sick. I returned from maternity leave at four weeks pregnant and used up a week of my owed holiday (I had 60 days). I then was hospitalised (pregnancy related) and have been off sick since. I am now almost seven months and been told that in the very unlikely event I make it to 37 weeks, I will give birth then. I still have 55 days to take but not enough time to do so between now and being 37 weeks. I’m happy to take most of it starting now rather than being sick, if that is ok as I have been signed off. Can I just withdraw the sick note? What will happen to the rest of the holiday (it won’t exceed 20 days but will be from my 2017 holiday entitlement rather than 2018 and I don’t know if that makes a difference). Can I start my maternity leave after I give birth so I could use up leave until 40 weeks and then start maternity leave even though I will definitely have a baby by then? Do I need to tell my employer when I give birth?

@flowery does that mean I can carry over my 2017 holiday as it is still unused even though I would be in a new leave year? Thank you.

I would call ACAS for advice on this one as it is complicated x

It’s a really complicated one. You have to start maternity leave when you give birth, so you could use annual leave up until that point but it sounds as though you will still lose some of your holiday.

I agree that you need to speak to ACAS, I hope they can help x