SSP immediately before maternity leave.....will I be entitled to SMP?

[lackaDAISYcal]

I'm currently signed off with PND from my last pregnancy/AND from this pregnancy (so just plain old depression really!) and am now 22 weeks pregnant. I have been off since the beginning of May and have been receving company sick pay which runs out in the first week of July.

My materntity leave is due to start in the middle of August and the doctor has suggested I stay off until then. SSP rate is only about £75 a week and I'm concerned that this will mean that I'm below the lower earnings limit for the 8 week qualifying period and as such won't be entitled to any SMP (I had already resigned myself to the fact that I would only be on the lower amount for the duration of my maternity leave)

Can anyone shed some light on this?

Daisy SMP as you know is worked out on the basis of your average weekly earnings for an 8 week period up to and including the 15th week before you are due. So the period when you are 17-25 weeks pregnant. After that period if your earnings drop it doesn't matter.

If you've been receiving company sick pay for most of that time you might be ok, depending on how much that is. If you go on to SSP now, that will be about 3 weeks on SSP during the 8 week period, and 5 weeks on whatever your company sick pay is. If you can work out what that average is, you may be ok.

Thanks flowery . Our company sick pay is very convoluted and involves full and half days. I think I might just scrape through, but I can't find the pay statements till the end of July that my employer sent me a couple of weeks ago!

If not, I'll be able to claim MA though and as far as I understand I can use the weeks that I was on full pay for calculating that so should still get the basic amount.

Thanks for your help...again

I thought it was the eight weeks immediately prior to your leave as well. The fact that it's from 17-25 weeks means my average weekly pay is around £190 net after tax and NI so I should be well in. (wonders whether she can trust pregnancy brain with complicated sums)

Sounds like you are ok by quite a margin, so that's fine!

For obvious reasons a fairly high proportion of women are off sick during the latest weeks of pregnancy, and many more have temporarily reduced their hours. If SMP were based on those weeks loads of people would be penalised, so it's fairer this way.

...as long as my clueless HR department know the rules! They "forgot" to pay me for my annual leave that I took at the end of my maternity leave after having DD!

If it helps, working out whether and how much SMP you are entitled to would normally be something Payroll would do. Are they any better?

lol...same chap department