Occupational Maternity Pay

[ericamouse]

Hi,
I am currently on a year career break and I am due to start back to work on the 5th May 2009, however I am now pregnant and the EDD is the 14th July 2009 so I wasn't sure whether I'd be entitled to SMP from my employer as I have been employed by them since 2001. I have just had a response back from HR stating that I would not be entitled to SMP but would be entitled to 26 weeks Occupational Maternity Pay. I cannot find anything about this on the internet and have been in touch with DWP and the man said that he had never heard of it. Could someone enlighten me as to what Occupation Maternity Pay is as I seem to be getting more confused by the day.

Thanks for any info

Perhaps they mean Maternity Allowance unless they operate their own scheme in addition ?

Well I just emailed them back asking what Occupational Maternity is and she said that Occupational Maternity Pay meant Departmental Maternity Pay ie full pay for 26 weeks. I'm a little bit confused though because I thought that full pay would be SMP or would it be SMP if they were paying me full pay for the whole year, not just for the 26 weeks? She said that she would check how much I would get and then come back to me. I wish things were a bit more straight forward

Not an expert, but I would say you are entitled to SMP, but that because you have been employed by them since 2001, you are also entitled to their occupational maternity package. You will get SMP, and they will then pay the difference on top to bring you up to normal salary for 6 months. After that I guess you will revert to SMP only. But you do need to clarify it with HR.

Info here - www.dwp.gov.uk/advisers/ni17a/smp/smp_16.asp

There are two 'tests' for SMP:

Employed for more than 26 weeks by 15th week before EDD (31/03/09 for you)

Average earnings over the earnings threshold during weeks 17-25 of pregnancy (03/02/09 - 31/03/09 for you)

You can see that although you satisfy your criteria 1, your average earnings for weeks 17-25 are £0 because you haven't returned to work.

Therefore, you are not eligible for SMP.

That doesn't stop you being eligible for OCCUPATIONAL maternity pay, which is up to the employer to set the rules for.

You satisfy their rules, so will get their Occupational Maternity pay. SO if your OMP is 26 weeks full pay, that is what you will get.

Where it gets slightly more complicated, is that by receiving the OMP, you may well be entitled to receive Maternity Allowance. Maternity Allowance depends on two conditions:

1. Employed for 26 weeks in the 66 weeks prior to EDD - YES.
2. Average earnings of >£30 in 13 of those 66 weeks.

On 5th May you will be 30 weeks pregnant. Depending on what you earn, you could work for say 5 weeks, earn £300 per week (gross) in each of these weeks, and therefore receive the full Maternity Allowance for 39 weeks as well as your OMP.

What does your contract say about holiday pay? If you are entitled to holiday pay, you may need to try and take holiday before Maternity leave, which all counts towards Maternity Allowance as well.

Forgot to say, that your OMP should count as earnings towards MA.

You are very lucky! You are not entitled to SMP because, as lou points out, you won't have been earning anything during the crucial time when SMP is worked out.

Most occupational maternity pay schemes will have similar criteria, so if yours pays you full pay for 26 weeks even though you have not been at work earning money, that's fantastic.

Thanks for all your information but can you advise me as to whether I am understanding it right. As far as Maternity allowance is concerned, April the 8th 2008 to July 14th my EDD = 66 weeks. I worked 4 weeks from April 8th 2008 to 5th May 2008 (ie when I started my career break). If I go back to work after my career break on the 4th May 2009 and work till the 14th July 2009 (my EDD) that would be another 10 weeks worked, which would come to 14 weeks worked over the 66 weeks. The only thing is, is that as I'm going to have to have a caesarian so it is quite likely that I will have to have the baby one week to 10 days before my EDD and to be honest if I feel as rotten as I did for my other 2 pregnancies I'm thinking that I might not want to go back for the 10 weeks before my EDD so if I didn't go back and just chose to start my maternity leave on my due back to work date of the 4th May 2009 would I still be able to claim Maternity Allowance as I would have earn't £535 during the period of April 8th 2008 to the 5th May 2008, so even though I would have earn't zero wages over the other 9 weeks, ie the 13 week criteria, the average salary would be £535 / 13 weeks = £38.46 , therefore over 13 weeks my salary would have still exceeded £30 per week, even though for 9 weeks there would have been no pay. Am I understanding this right, or am I just loosing the plot?

Read here all about Maternity Allowance.

It doesn't seem right that if you are receiving full pay from your employer you would still be able to claim Maternity Allowance, but from your calculations above it seems on the face of it that you might be able to claim it. However as your gross average earnings for the 13 weeks will be less than the £117, you will instead get 90% of the gross average earnings.

I would advise you talk to someone at the benefits office to make sure there is not a clause anywhere that means if you are receiving maternity pay from your employer you can't claim.

To clarify, the Decision Makers Guide volume 10 states:

62594 For the purposes of DMG 62591 ? 62593 the work includes work of either category a woman does in her own home. However, housework does not count for this purpose. Receipt of salary or wages (but not Statutory Maternity Pay) during the period of receipt of Maternity Allowance, such as paid maternity leave, is not a ground for disqualification.

However, in finding this, I also found:

62522 The employment conditions is that the claimant is employed or self-employed earner for at least 26 weeks in the 66 weeks immediately before the expected week of confinement. This 66 week period is known as the test period. A week means a whole week or any part of a week1. For employed earners, this is satisfied as long as a contract of employment exists2. However, a claimant who is on unpaid leave (for example a career break) is not engaged in employment.

So, if you are officially on a career break, you are not deemed as 'employed', so I retract my statement about being entitled to MA on those grounds. If you has been on Mat leave, however, you would have been entitled to both.

link to Decision Makers Guide

Ooh that's helpful lou, so although a career break doesn't (necessarily) result in a break in continous employment, it wouldn't count as employment for these purposes. Makes sense.

ericamouse, I have just seen your post.

So, you need 26 weeks employment in total. Unfortunately, a career break is not counted as employment for MA purposes, but does count for your contracted OMP purposes.

To qualify for Maternity Allowance, you need to have 26 weeks (or part weeks) of work accrued.

So, what you could do, is try to negotiate returning to work early, and amass 22 weeks employment, as you have 26 weeks before your EDD. If you were able to do that, you would qualify, not forgetting that any annual leave you are due would count as employment also. So if you had 7 weeks due to you for the year, you could potentially only work for 15 weeks.

Normally, you could do 1 day per week, which would still qualify you. But you have to remember that this would reduce your OMP, which you don't want to do.

On that note, does your work have a policy regarding what counts as 'full pay' for your OMP? It has occurred to me that in the NHS, for example, the 'full pay' is taken as the average of your earnings for weeks 17-25 of pregnancy. If that was the case, your 'full pay' would be £0, so you would be paid in effect 26 weeks of £0. You need to find out if your company operates on 'full pay' meaning your normal salary, or full pay meaning your average pay over a standard time frame. This might affect your decision to return to work early.

Sorry to give you more to think about.

Just to clarify, the reason firms normally do this is to be fair to people who may have a contract for say, 20 hours, but regularly worked 30 hours in the lead up to maternity leave. Obviously, in your case, it would work against you, but they have to be consistent with policy.

I would say it is vital for you to find out, and quickly, if it makes a big difference financially to you, because you only have 26 weeks left before your EDD, and you would need to negotiate early return fast!

Its not looking good then. I don't think I'll have any chance of being allowed back to work at such short notice and to be honest, I'm looking after my stroppy 2 year old full time and cheeky 6 year old so theres all the finding childcare issues as well to deal with. I'm just hoping that the occupational maternity pay will be worked out using my previous salary before my career break, and not using my zero earnings during my career break. I'm still waiting for HR to come back to me to tell me what, if any pay I will be entitled to, fingers crossed its good news, but I have a bad feeling about it. I must say thought, you all really know your stuff, and your help and advice is really appreciated. Soon as I hear anything, which hopefully will be today I shall keep you updated of any new developments

Does the maternity policy not say anything about how occupational maternity pay is worked out erica?

This is where I am getting confused, as when I asked HR what Occupational Maternity pay was, she said that it mean't departmental pay. This is what it says in the guidelines relating to departmental pay. " you will receive 26 weeks Departmental Maternity Pay. Departmental Maternity Pay is made up of Statutory Maternity Pay (SMP) plus an additional amount to make the total payment equivalent to full pay. It is paid throughout Ordinary Maternity Leave" The only thing that confuses me is that she said that I was not entitled to SMP but then it says that SMP is included in the departmental pay. In the guide, it doesn't even mention Occupational Maternity pay. I'm wondering whether HR are giving me the correct information.

Departmental Maternity Pay is Occupational Maternity Pay. 'Occupational maternity pay' means is any maternity pay paid to you by your employers over and above SMP.

Often occupational maternity pay schemes will have terms and conditions that include specifying that to be entitled to it you must be entitled to SMP, or something, and they would normally top up SMP to full pay level, or whatever the occupational scheme is.

But if all your scheme says is that you receive full pay for 26 weeks and doesn't say anything about how much you have to have earned or needing to be entitled to SMP, then you should be fine.

Can i have some help please ??

I have just recieved my payment schedule from work the only amounts on there are omp due then theyv attached an smp form to it
Does this mean where it says omp due thats what im going to be paid from work then i have to apply for smp from the jc too?
If so why am i entitled to both ?

I started work on 20/10/2014
Leaving on maternity on 19/06/2015
Edd 16/07/2015