Employment Contract Terms & Maternity Pay Clause

cindy01

I work for a US firm with operations in UK. In their 10 years of operations here nobody has taken a maternity leave. There is no formal maternity/paternity pay policy in place in the appointment letter or in any other written form. All ordinary paternity leaves so far have been paid 100% for 2 weeks.
In April I applied for 52 weeks of maternity leave after being told by my HR that I would be paid in full for 52 weeks. My maternity leave starts early October.
Now after about a month, I have been told that, it was a mistake and that they would only pay 6 weeks of full pay and rest would be on standard SMP rate of £138.18. I have been working here for 6.5 years .


Question : Is the promise of 52 weeks full pay legally binding in anyway? Does it become a contractual term by virtue of me having en e-mail communication confirming 52 weeks compensation?
As per "uk gov employment-contracts-and-conditions"(unable to post the link here),an employment contract term does not necessarily need to be in written form.
The company claims this has been okayed by their attorney and it appears I have to accept it.

Fran

Can anyone help?

Takeaway_Addict

Fran wrote: »

Can anyone help?

Lawyers can....

It sounds like the employer made a mistake and is changing it. I love the fact that the OP puts 'compensation' for being pregnant...brilliant.

The OP would need to go through a tribunal to try and enforce the email but I personally wouldn't hold out much hope as its a pretty big mistake so understandable the employer is changing it.

Though, of course for the money the OP could potentially get it might be worth spending some money on a lawyer

cindy01

Thanks for the response. Well, that's the language my HR used -"compensation". Anyways, I don't think its worth going to the tribunal- don't need a new problem at this time.

Takeaway_Addict

Might be worth checking on redundancyforum.co.uk from SarEL but be aware she will be blunt.

cindy01

Thanks Takeaway_addict for the suggestion, I did get a prompt opinion from them - which is basically that having made an error, the employer is allowed to correct it.