Work say I can’t carry over A/L to add onto maternity leave

[ALquery]

I work in local authority and my annual leave year is the same as the calendar year.

I’m pregnant and my baby is due in September, so let’s say my twelve months maternity leave would run from September-August.

Work are saying that I can’t carry over any of my 2024 annual leave allowance (to add on to the end of my maternity leave), bar three days. They are saying I have to use it all up before the baby is born in September.

I don’t think this is right, but they are adamant. Can anyone confirm if they are right please? Thank you.

They are not wrong. The reason advice on the internet cannot be trusted is because of posters like you who answer questions when you don’t actually know the answer. They are not doing anything wrong.

ACAS advice is that it should be a conversation between you and your employer.

My company asks you to take all accrued holiday prior to your leave, and any you accrue must be taken within three months of your leave ending. I think that seems fair.

The watch out would be if you give birth early. Then your maternity leave would start immediately and you could lose the holiday.

This is such a company specific issue. In my company, I can use my 2024 annual leave allowance to book time off in 2025. However in your case, your company has chosen to ask you to take your leave at a certain time which is within their gift

I suppose it’s to minimise the impact of you being out of office for an extended period of time

they might feel it’s easier for them to cover your absence for 12 days annual leave before your maternity leave vs after your maternity leave

Also, if you do it that you take your annual leave and then Mat leave starts from the due date, I don’t think they actually ask for any update of when baby is born. So even if baby comes early while you are on A/L, I don’t think they actually take note of that if you see what I mean. My previous 2 work places didn’t anyway..

I would check with HR on this one and maybe pregnant, then screwed.

They are within their rights to ask you to take all accrued holiday before Mat leave. During your mat leave any accrued days or days that you couldn't reasonably take as holiday are normally carried over to the next holiday year. So for you Sept-Dec.

You will accrued holiday as per your current working contract.

During your mat leave, you may take 10 days kit or as split days if your company allows. You can not draw on holiday during mat leave until you're in the unpaid portion. Doing so before that will automatically trigger the end of your leave.

You can usually do this by notification of intent to withdraw holiday pay by writing to manager, hr and your payroll department to use accrued holiday. You may also have to write to them to request that your accrued holiday from 2024 be carried over to the next year.

I'm currently on mat leave and have done exactly this. I had 15 days accrued (holiday year runs April-March) and am currently being paid one days accrued holiday per week until my return in June. The 2 odd days will be carried over. From April- June I will accrue holiday at my f/t contract accrual, and then my flexible working request kicks in at 4 days. I will have the accrued f/t hol plus the holiday allowance for 4 days/per wk and the two odd days to use up by the end on March '25.

This is incorrect. If baby arrives early whilst on annual leave you're suppose to notify your employers and mat leave will officially start from the day after baby is born.

Generally it's calculated based on the number of months that are left in the year. If you were leaving the company for example, you would be entitled to your annual leave minus 3 days (as you mentioned that's the amount they said you can carry over). With an earlier mat leave they likely calculate it differently.

The only way this could be correct is if the leave policy for your company states that you can only take leave after it has been accrued. Say the leave year is Jan - Dec and you want to take AL for a week at Feb half term, you’ll only have worked 6 weeks by that time, so wouldn’t have accrued enough AL.

Take it as annual leave for a couple of weeks before your due date and start mat leave on that day.

Make sure it's booked week in advance and see if you can get agreement that your leave needs to be cancelled because baby has come early then as it's not possibly to take your booked leave, it can be carried over.

Can you plan it as total leave and not get hung up on days accrued?

As an example, In 2024 you book 3 weeks AL in August then mat leave from first sept.

If baby arrives early - you are then allowed to carry forward your annual leave.

In 2025, you take the rest of your Mat leave and add on your 2025 annual leave allocation.

However you add it up you get your full mat leave + annual leave before and afterwards + bank holidays.

I went off October to October. Holiday entitlement is financial year.

I had to take October - March annual leave prior to going off as that is the maternity policy at my work. I then accrued bank holidays and holidays from April - October and used these for a phased return to work.

I work for the LA too and I was made to use all my leave before I went on mat leave. I wanted to use it at the end but I couldn't. My leave year had just started too.

My company was the same, but you get to choose the start date of your mat leave so I just tacked the leave onto the start of it and my official mat leave started later than it would otherwise have done, if that makes sense - and I had accrued so much holiday while I was off that I got an extra almost two months before I started back, too

Yep this was the case for me. To be honest I was so shocked to them accrue leave when I wasn’t working and thought that was bonkers so it didn’t occur to me to challenge it.

how much leave do you have? I’d happily take minimum 4 weeks off before due date! But I do see your question and I suspect it’s a grey area and both are acceptable positions. The question is can they require you to take leave not yet accrued- if they can’t then they MUST let you carry it over. I’d read this and contact these people and possibly acas too
https://workingfamilies.org.uk/articles/holiday-entitlement-while-on-maternityshared-parental-parental-leave/

I was the same and had to take my annual leave before baby came so I pushed my mat leave back.... I cut my weeks down to 4 days then 3 days and took the remaining time from around weeks 37 to 40 and didnt start mat leave until about 40 weeks... this gave me time off before baby was here but my official leave didn't start until closer to my due date and then I had the next year's annual leave to use after my mat leave was up.

Sorry I don't agree with this. My best friend works for a local authority and she added all accrued leave to the end of her maternity leave, she wasn't made to take it beforehand. It actually makes a huge difference to dates and pay so OP isn't being unreasonable here.

My leave year runs from 1st April and I had a baby in April, so could only take 4 days leave from that year's entitlement before going on mat leave. My employer allowed me to carry all the leave over. This applies to every employee although they encourage you to take as much as possible before going on mat leave, or in my case where that was impossible, add it on the end. Sounds like this is unusual then, but it shouldn't be!

I guess its contract specific. I work in private sector, i was allowed to carry over all my hols and either be paid for them at return to work, take them after mat leave or carry them into the following year

This is what I did - I took my full six weeks annual leave and then started maternity leave. I had ten weeks at home before my baby was born. It was amazing.

They'd expect holidays to be used in the calendar year. End unpaid mat leave in November and have December as paid holiday leave.
Which is what many people would do anyway.

No no no @ALquery this is discrimination

I had the exact same issue. I finished work mat leave 1st December and my new entitlement started September. By law they can encourage you to take them but cannot force. Look up your right on the acas website.

They would never force you to take them whilst not pregnant so why when pregnant. It is classed as discrimination

The only thing asked of me was I wasn't allowed to return with a full years entitlement so was asked to add on to the end of my mat leave. Fine by me. I have 8 weeks to add on so I'm off for around 14 months.

Message me if you need help. X

I had this situation, so had to schedule my outstanding annual leave before maternity leave started. Baby arrived early (while I was still on the annual leave part), maternity leave then started instantly and I LOST an entire week of annual leave. No financial compensation/no carry-over. So frustrating!

Surely the op won't have accured the 12 days before taking them?

What if something happened and the op decided to quit in the September.... surely she would then be expected to pay back the leave she was forced to take that she hasn't yet accured? Or am I missing something?

I was allowed to carry 5 days over.

I finished in June and had loads to take . About two months before I planned to finish I went down to 3 days using 2 days holiday a week. It was nice as I got a long weekend to potter around. Then in the last month I went down to 2 days and put in 3 days holiday a week. So it was a nice gradually finish.