Any HR or wages people here? Term time only urgent question

[Arrgghhr]

Hi, hoping someone may have knowledge or experience of this! I work term time only, 37.5 hours a week. Recently taken maternity leave, due any day so my head's a bit muddled as you can imagine.
I know by law I should accrue holiday as normal while on leave. For ease lets say I take a full year. As I get the holidays off anyway (unpaid) my annual leave is built into my wages so I get the same paycheck every month. For example 20K salary full time divided by 36 weeks term plus 5 weeks holiday. ie 20K/41=my annual salary.
This is how it was explained when I drops from 52 weeks to my current hours.
Anyway...I feel that I should be being paid my usual 5 week leave entitlement while I'm off. HR are saying no, you've had plenty of time off (unpaid holidays) in both leave years (my mat leave spans 2 years) so they are just lost. Now what I don't get is if my holiday pay is a proportion of my monthly wage (lets say £100) surely there are many months which I miss out on when I'm off. I'm so confused as you can probably tell.
Anyone any advice or similar situation?

Can't you just tell us the actual figures to try and help work it out?

I don't want to give the actual figures as worried about being outed sorry. During maternity leave I only get statutory pay plus a tiny bit extra (like £40 a month for a few months). In normal times I get around 25K, but instead of 52 weeks of that I get 36+5 (my working weeks plus holiday) pro rata. This is divided equally over 12 months. my point is that I wont be getting anything but SMP for many months so where does the extra holiday pay go?

You need to give some consistent figures as you say in first post £20k and in the second £25k. You don’t have to give real figures but give consistent ones e.g.
Full time equivalent for 37.5 hours x 52.2 = ?
Your Annual salary I.e. FTE \ 52.2 x 41 = ?
Normal monthly salary =?
Maternity monthly salary = ?

Are you entitled to occupational maternity pay? If so what is it e.g. 6 months full pay?

I meant to say, you should get your annual leave during your mat leave to take when you return. As your mat leave spans two leave years how many days leave did you have in the first year?
For example leave year is 1 April to 31 March, you started mat leave on 1 September and had taken x days leave between April and September.

That doesn't sound right. Let's say your AL year runs with the calendar year. You have worked 4 months (Jan to Apr) so been paid £400 (to use your example figure) for your holidays. But for a year of holidays you should be paid £1200. So you haven't had a year of paid holidays, you have had 1/3 of them. You are still owed that extra £800 somehow, whether that is paid monthly or on a lump. And then this would apply again for the next AL year. In your case it is not about being allowed the days off, but being correctly paid for them.

Another way of looking at it is it is just WHEN you are paid. Let's say your salary for working 41 weeks is £20500. So each week you earn £500. To help you budget, they even your pay out, so each month they pay you £20500/12 (approx £1600). So in Jan to Apr you would get approx £6400, equivalent to about 13 weeks work. However if they claim you have taken all your year's leave in Jan to Apr, you should have been paid for approx 18 weeks, roughly £9000. They can pay you that extra monthly, but you can't just 'lose it' or you aren't getting paid leave.

(Disclaimer: no calculator so may have made errors on figures but just trying to give an example.)

Update to figures: in my example you would be paid approx £1700 (not £1600) per month, or approx £6800 for 4 months.

I think the logical answer is for whatever your normal holiday pay is each month to be paid in addition to your maternity pay each month? You certainly shouldn't lose out on it, it's a legal requirement! I'm also on a term time contract so obviously don't get to actually take time off so get holiday pay (and salary) spread evenly throughout the year.