Rights For New Mums Who Work!

Women whose expected week of childbirth starts on or after 5 October 2008, will be entitled to receive non-cash benefits from their employers during additional maternity leave!

How much time off and what benefits do employees have on maternity leave?

Ordinary Maternity Leave (OML)

All employees, regardless of length of service, who give birth and comply with various notification conditions, are entitled to a period of 26 weeks OML.

During OML, an employee is entitled to benefit from all her terms and conditions which would have applied had she been at work apart from remuneration. Remuneration means wages or salary. This would mean, that if an employee had the entitlement to benefits such as the use of a company car, private health insurance, and gym membership, then these benefits would continue in this period.

Additional Maternity Leave (AML)

All employees whose expected week of childbirth started on or after 1 April 2007, and who qualified for OML, will also qualify for AML if they wish to take it. This follows immediately at the end of OML and lasts for a further 26 weeks.

At the moment, an employee’s entitlement to her non-cash benefits would cease during a period of additional maternity leave.  

Employees whose expected week of childbirth is on or after 5 October 2008 will, however, be entitled to continue to non-cash benefits as they would have done during OML. This will also mean that accrual of annual leave will need to be calculated at an employee’s contractual rate and not statutory rate. 

What about pay?

Subject to certain qualifying criteria, an employee may be entitled to receive statutory maternity pay for 39 weeks. Employers can choose to be more generous, if they so wish!

New Guidance from HMRC

HMRC has published new guidance on the entitlement of women to receive non-contractual benefits during additional maternity leave. The guidance also deals with the impact of salary sacrifice arrangements on the amount of statutory maternity pay or contractual maternity pay payable to an employee who has agreed with her employer to accept a reduction in her cash salary in exchange for a non-cash benefit (for example, childcare vouchers).

See www.hmrc.gov.uk/employers/sml-salary-sacrifice.pdf