How to make sure get full time holiday entitlement from ML before part time contract starts

[lovely74]

I'm on ML from a full time job and hope to go part time on my return. My boss and I did not discuss specifics before I left but she knows I'll be reqesting PT on my return. So far I've not contacted her further. I'm taking the full year off, and then will take the leave I've accrued (33 days) bofore I return.
So, before I email her about renegotiating my contract, I wanted to ask for advice on the procedures to follow to make sure I remain on my full time contract until I've taken all the leave. Is this something they'll just expect, so start my new contract from early nov, or is there a chance they'll get funny and try and get my new PT contract to start at the end of my ML, so I get less leave (therefore less cash!). I work for the NHS so in theory they should be pretty good but my boss is quite rubbish TBH.

any advice gratefully recieved......

If you were one of my staff I would expect you to get your holiday entitlements for fulltime position before you are contracted to start your part time hours. I work in social care and we tend to have the same rules as NHS. I would suggest that you ask for the part time contract to start on the date when you are due back following holiday entitlement (unless they agree to just pay it)

If you are putting in a flexible working request one of the things you will need to specify is when you want your new hours to start from. As long as you put the date you are due back, you'll be fine.

Make sure your outstanding holiday is booked beforehand though - your employer could refuse a holiday request to take it all joined on to your maternity leave so you don't want to request your new hours start 33 working days after your ML ends only to find they don't approve the request to actually take that holiday in one go.

Thanks that's really helpful. I think in my team they EXPECT all outstanding holiday to be taken before you return from ML, or they end up with someone with shed loads of leave which they really hate.

So, prob best to speak to HR first and confirm my return date, put in my AL request, and then a flex working request?

I had this exact same worry but rang and spoke to my HR dept and they understood exactly what I meant, but said that they set up the system so that on the day you return, it "flips" your contract to whatever new hours you're doing - in other words, this doesn't happen before the return date. I bet you will find it's the same for you, esp as you work for a big company like the NHS. So many people go off on ML all the time, they will have a standard way of sorting this out.