Resigning on mat leave help

[Tisfortired]

Can anybody help me with this please?

I am currently on maternity leave which started 3rd January. My maternity leave ends at the end of this month, but I am not due back at work until 6th November as I was basically using all of my accrued holiday to have October off aswell.

Now me and my partner have agreed for me to not go back, to enjoy the rest of this year with LO and find a more suitable (current job is awful toxic place and about 2.5 hours commute) and closer to home in the New Year.

My question is, can I resign after I have received my final SMP this month or is it best to do it with as much notice as possible? Eg if I resign on 29th September that’s a little over a month notice that I’m not going back (my notice period is one month.) I don’t want them to lump my final SMP and holiday pay all in one at the end of September if I do it now and lose a load of it in tax, if I’m right in thinking that would happen. I’d rather receive my final SMP this month than my accrued holiday pay at the end of October if possible.

My boss has been ringing me for a ‘catch up’ and I know he just wants to know if I’m going back or not but I don’t want to resign too early.

I have only received SMP no enhanced mat pay.

I don't think the SMP is an issue as you're still entitled to take a full year off even if it's different to what you decided in your initial maternity arrangements.

Could you tell them that you now intend to take a year off but at the 11th month, hand your notice in?

The only issue I can see if whether you may owe holiday if you take your full years entitlement without having accrued it all.

Hi @hdbs17 thank you for replying, I hadn’t thought of asking to extent it a year then resigning later on. Re my holidays, I am entitled to 28 days and by the end of September would have accrued around 20 days so that’s all they’ll pay me.

In theory, if you do extend to 12 months then you'll actually the extra 28 days so I would find out from your employer if you can take the 12 months - then add the 28 days on after that, at which point you could hand in your notice.

Accrue, not actually....

Maternity Action are amazing if you need more advice, they have a great website and also a helpline.

Best option would have been to extend mat leave to 1 year then resign a month before your return date, as above, to accrue max holiday. However, you're supposed to give 8 weeks' notice to change your mat leave end date and if your mat leave is due to end at the end of this month, then it's now too late to give full notice and your employer may not agree to the change of return date.

Any employer I've worked for would waive the notice requirement and let you extend, so it's not to say that it's impossible at this stage, just forewarning you that if they want to be arsey then they may refuse the extension in which case you might end up just having to resign now anyway to avoid having to physically return.

If you do resign now (if they won't let you extend your return date) do it on 30th Sept so your last day is end of Oct and then you'll get all your accrued holiday pay in October. If you resign with your last day as Nov 5th to avoid going back on Nov 6th then they might pay the last week owed in November's pay run, so leaving at end of Oct just means you're all done and dusted without waiting for the extra bit in Nov.