Maternity allowance for freelancers

[rochester]

I am rather
I have been working fulltime as a freelancer for the last 10 years and have always paid my tax and national insurance contributions.
However in this last year for the first time I have been working less regularly for several reasons

1. Not as much work due to recession
2. I moved house and spent 4 months project managing house renovations
3. I took on less work to enable me to relax and conceive (which worked!)

Much to my anoyance however I now descover that my eligability for maternity allowance is worked out over this very test period. So after working every hour Gods sends for the last 10 years I learn this does not count! Can this be right?

Unfortunatly over the last year work has dried up for me foecing me to live of savings, I have of course kept up my weekly NI contributions.

Rochester, you are fine
As long as you have paid your national insurance you will get maternity allowance
My MA has just started a few weeks ago, I thought I would have to submit my accounts etc but if you get a copy of the form, you actually don't need to do any of that, they just check with national insurance office that your payments are all up to date and you are sorted.
You will get the full amount for 9 months - well I did anyway, no questions asked.
We were also abel to qualify for the sure start maternity grant, so worth applying for that too, another £500 really helped.
Good luck!!

if you look here at page 8, it says that
If you
l are registered as self-employed, and
l have paid Class 2 National Insurance
contributions, and
l do not hold a Small Earnings Exception
certificate
you will be treated as having enough weekly
earnings to result in the standard rate of MA for any
week covered by that Class 2 National Insurance
contribution.
Hope that confirms it for you!!

Thankyou, that is such good news.
I was told by the maternity allowance gov helpline that I had to have worked 26 weeks of my test period (22 march 2009-26 June 2010) earning a minimum of £30.
In fact in the test period I only worked for 13 weeks. (In the weeks I did work I earned in excess of £1000 allowing me to take weeks off)
I was amazed when I was told by this government helpline that I would not get the full allowance, I have spent most of the morning trying to get a job to get my weeks worked up to 26 by June.

Rochester, I don't know exactly how it works, but I do have a friend who has basically not worked at all over the last year, but she is classified as self employed and has paid her national insurance so is assuming that she will still get maternity allowance???
here is the actual claim form, you need to scroll down past the notes. I just glanced through it and I can't see a specific question about did you work for x number of weeks in the last so many weeks etc in the self employed section. You can ignore all the bits about employers etc... I personally would feel better about filling in the form if I didn't have to lie, but that's personal preference, but if it doesn't ask....???
HOpe that has set your mind at ease, I know I was really stressing till I had a reply from them!!!

rochester the details the helpline gave you are how it works for employees (if they don't qualify for SMP) so they must have been confused. The situation for the self-employed is as others have said here.

I am both part-time employed and part-time self-employed (paying full Class 2 NI contributions) On the form, it seems like you have to fill in both the employed section and the self-employed section. They don't give you an option to fill in just one or the other.

Can I just claim on the self-employed bit of the form and get a standard weekly rate since I've been paying Class 2 NI contributions? Or do I have to go through the whole test period, sending in payslips thing - and possibly also get less money in the end!?

You need to fill in the employment details too, and send in the form SMP1 from each employer. This is so that they can check that you are not entitled to SMP from any employer.

Providing you are not entitled to SMP, the amount you will get as self-employed will not be affected.

Thanks for the reply mranchovy -

And if I am entitled to SMP (even if it's something like £2 a week since I am only a part-time on-off agency worker), does that mean that I cannot get ANY maternity allowance at all? How will I survive on £2 a week SMP?

Sorry, I missed the last question. Yes if you are entitled to SMP you will not be entitled to MA. But to be entitled to SMP you have to have earned an average of at least £95 per week for at least 8 weeks up to the last pay day before your qualifying week. And that is the same period that is used to calculate how much SMP you will get, so if you have only averaged £95 you will get 90% of £95 for 39 weeks: more than £2 a week but not as much as the full MA rate of £123 for 39 weeks which you can qualify for as self employed.

BUT to qualify for SMP you must have been continuously employed for 26 weeks up to the 15th week before your due date. For agency work the definition of 'continuous employment' is quite complicated, so read this section of NI 17A which deals with these provisions.

Confused! I am coming to the end of my maternity leave from my first baby. I was employed full time beforehand and therefore claimed SMP and AML. I am now considering going freelance as I don't want to return to my job full time and thats all thats open to me. If I go freelance, do I have to work for a certain amount of time before I get pregnant again to qualify for MA for the second baby? Please help!