Job advertised 12 month contract, offered 6 - and I'm pregnant

[Morrighanan]

Hi,

Appreciate some help as I'm mildly flipping out right now.
I am 7 weeks pregnant and recently was offered a job starting in a few weeks. On the job advert and during the interview this was advertised as 12 month contract. I think - fine, as I will just get maternity allowance and be entitled to maternity leave when baby is due in September.
I've just received my job contract and they have changed it to 6 months. I asked them to change it to 12 months as discussed and was told that they 'offer 6 month contracts as standard and renew after 6 months'.
Problem here now is that I will have to inform them of my pregnancy before my first contract ends, and if they terminate my contract at 6 months I will literally by 2 days miss the cut off to be entitled to maternity allowance.

I have turned down other jobs and interviews for this job and I feel totally shafted and now extremely stressed given that I'm relocating and will only be able to prove 6 months income, not to mention having no income after baby comes.

Could someone help me out here with what to do and what my rights are if I take this job?
Thanks

@PurpleGoose

I would contact ACAS for advice about breach of verbal contract.

I would very much doubt that this is a breach of contract. Fixed term contracts in employment will generally still have a notice period so the 12 months was never guaranteed anyway.

Op, it’s far easier to just alter your EDD by a few days.

Presumably you need a Mat 1B form for maternity allowance?
Whenever I’ve gone to the GP to ask for mine, they ask me what the EDD is (rather than look it up on notes)

So get the doc to put it a week later and you’ll be fine

Thank you to everyone who provided helpful advice and suggestions, really appreciate it.

For the benefit of anyone else reading this, after speaking with the Jobcentre and ACAS this is how things stand to the best of my knowledge:

I do qualify for maternity allowance - 25 weeks and 5 days counts as 26 weeks. Even if you only work 1 hour on that 26th week then you qualify. This is a huge relief to me as even if I don't get renewed then I can start on MA and the 6 month contract takes me almost up to my due date anyway. If my job disappears for business reasons then I will at least have an income to help pay bills.

ACAS said that until the contract is signed then there is no real way to challenge them changing the offer, however that if they are saying at this point that they plan to renew and then handle it unfairly (whether due to discrimination etc) then that would be time to be taking action.

To everyone who dropped in to give their useless opinions on why employers should be able to discriminate against pregnant women, or useless advice to time travel to before I got knocked up or qualified in a field where fixed term contracts are the norm, kindly get to fuck.