Maternity Pay

MikeL93

My girlfriend is due to give birth any day now, she is actually 5 days past the due date. She took four weeks worth of holidays from the end of April and then officially started her maternity leave last week, she gets paid weekly from her work.

She used to work at Wilko's and the day after she found out she was losing her job she found out she was pregnant. She decided to go back to her previous job which she hated but decided it was the lesser of two evils as she was able to walk straight back into that job a week after she finished at Wilkos and start earning again.

When she told her new job that she was pregnant she was told she didn't qualify for the companies 6 weeks worth of maternity pay, we knew this already, and she would have to apply for maternity allowance from the government.

She went through all the paperwork etc that needed to be filled out with her employers etc and sent it off. However, at the start of February she received a letter from her work telling her she was entitled to the 6 weeks worth of maternity pay.

Fast forward to yesterday when she got her first pay slip whilst on maternity leave and she hadn't been paid at all. So she rang her HR department at work and they told her that there had been a mistake and she wasn't actually entitled to the companies maternity pay so she will have to apply for maternity allowance. But she can only do that now once she receives a letter from her work saying she isn't entitled to maternity pay.

Obviously this is causing a lot of stress at completely the wrong time as this could have been sorted weeks ago if work had informed her she is not entitled to maternity pay and now it is something that will have to be sorted as soon as she comes out of hospital. 

Thankfully due to the fact I am on a good salary I am basically paying for everything whilst she is off work but from a legal standing is there anything we can do as it was written on a letter from her work that she would get maternity pay and there was no follow up letter telling her that she actually isn't?

pjs493

I hope you manage to resolve it soon. And congratulations on the impending birth. 

I was in a similar situation with one of my pregnancies. My husband was in the Armed Forces and a we were based overseas with his job. I had been working remotely for my employer without any issues and informed them of the move. Despite being aware of my situation for six months and actively working to help me work remotely, I was informed just a week after finding out I was pregnant that they had to terminate my employment, effective immediately because of my husband’s overseas assignment. 

Lots of legal letters went back and forwards but ultimately we just didn’t have the money to take my employer to a tribunal to keep my job. I ended up without maternity pay or maternity allowance because of my circumstances so went an entire year unpaid. By the time my maternity leave ended, my husband had been assigned back to the UK so my employer took me back on (although I lost all the annual pay increases I’d accrued and went back to the bottom of the pay scale ladder). But we did end up not only losing an income literally overnight unexpectedly, but then had to wait until we were back in the UK for me to work again. 

Citizens’ Advice may be able to help.