Maternity pay and returning to work

Working Rights

Maternity pay

• Although you can take 52 weeks’ maternity leave, you can only receive Statutory Maternity Pay from your employer or Maternity Allowance from the Department for Work and Pensions for 39 weeks. 
• To be eligible for Statutory Maternity Pay from your employer, you must have:

- worked continuously for them for at least 26 weeks up to and into the 15th week before the week when the baby is due

- average weekly earnings of at least £111

- written to your employer by the end of the 15th week before the week when your baby is due, telling them when you intend to take maternity leave and start receiving Statutory Maternity Pay, and giving them the maternity certificate (form MATB1), which your midwife will give you from the 21st week of your pregnancy.

• Statutory Maternity Pay is paid for 39 weeks. For the first six weeks it is paid at 90% of your average weekly earnings. The remaining 33 weeks are paid at whichever is lower of the Statutory Maternity Pay rate of £139.58 or 90% of your average weekly earnings.
• Your employer must tell you if you are not entitled to Statutory Maternity Pay by giving you form SMP1. In this case you can claim Maternity Allowance as soon as you’ve been pregnant for 26 weeks. Payments can start 11 weeks before your baby is due.
• You are eligible for Maternity Allowance if you:

- have been employed or self-employed for at least 26 weeks in the 66 weeks before the week your baby is due; and
- earned at least £30 per week over any 13-week period.

• Maternity Allowance is paid at whichever is lower of 90% of your average weekly earnings or £139.58 . It is paid for 39 weeks.
• Both parents may now be eligible to share 50 weeks of leave as Shared Parental Leave.
• Use the government’s calculator (https://www.gov.uk/calculate-your-maternity-pay) to estimate your Statutory Maternity Pay or Maternity Allowance.

Returning to work

• You do not need to tell your employer if you are returning to work on the date you have already given them. 
• You must give your employer eight weeks’ notice if you want to return on a different date.
• If you return after Ordinary Maternity Leave, you are entitled to your old job back. 
• If you return after taking Additional Maternity Leave, you only have a right to a similar job if it is not possible to return to the same job. The similar job must be at the same level with terms and conditions at least as good as your previous job. If you unreasonably refuse the similar job, your employer can take this as your resignation.
• You have no right to return to work part-time after maternity leave. But you are entitled to ask to change to another working pattern, such as part-time or flexible working. 
• The request must be in writing and should state:

- Your relationship to the child

- The proposed start date of the flexible working arrangement

- The effect the flexible working pattern will have on the employer’s business

- The date of any previous application for flexible working.

• Your employer has a statutory duty to consider the request seriously and to refuse it only if there are clear business grounds for doing so.

Where to get more information

GOV.UK, Maternity pay and leave
Acas, Maternity leave and pay
HM Revenue & Customs, Statutory Maternity Pay: an overview
Citizens Advice Bureau, Maternity leave
Equality and Human Rights Commission, Pregnancy and maternity

Childcare prices rise faster than the Government help for parents

By Rebecca Griffin

Childcare is a key part of a modern state’s infrastructure: it enables businesses and public services to function, parents to work and improves children’s outcomes and helps narrow the gap between disadvantaged children and their peers.

Without affordable childcare provision, the skills of working parents are lost and families are forced to depend on benefits, rather than contribute to the economy as tax-payers. Given how important childcare is to all of us, getting it right should to be a key objective of any incoming government.

Since 2002 the Family and Childcare Trust has undertaken an annual childcare survey – measuring the prices of childcare for parents and the availability of childcare places.

Our latest survey found that over the course of this Parliament, the cost of a part-time nursery place for a child under two has gone up by an inflation-busting 33 per cent. This means that a family paying for this type of care spends £1,533 more this year than in 2010, while wages have remained largely static.

In the last year alone, the cost of sending a child under two to nursery part-time increased by 5.1 per cent and now costs more than £6,000 per year. The cost of part-time care from a childminder has also risen – by 4.3 per cent – to over £5,400 per year.

We also looked at whether there is enough childcare in every local authority. The Childcare Act 2006 requires local authorities in England to make sure – as far as is practicable – that there is enough childcare for working parents, but despite this duty, this year just 43 per cent of councils in England had enough childcare for them, compared with 54 per cent last year. And the situation for disabled children has also deteriorated, with only 21 per cent of English local authorities compared with 28 per cent in 2014.

During this Parliament we have welcomed extra support for parents through the new tax free voucher scheme and a commitment to raise the amount of childcare support in Universal Credit. But, if childcare costs continue to rise at this pace, the benefits of this new financial support to parents will be quickly eroded within the next Parliament.

So, despite welcome government investment in support for parents with childcare costs and the rhetoric of the importance of early intervention, the reality is that for too many families it simply does not pay to work and the childcare system in Britain needs radical reform.

In the short term, we want to see the next Government merge Universal Credit support for childcare with the tax-free childcare scheme to create a single and fair system and extend free early education to cover all two year olds and for 48 weeks of the year for all two, three and four year olds.

But these short term measures will not fix the problem. In the run up to the next general election in May, the Family and Childcare Trust is calling on all political parties to commit to an independent review of childcare funding. Britain needs a simple system that promotes quality, supports parents and delivers for children.