Statutory Maternity Leave Entitlements

What is statutory maternity leave?

A U.K based maternity leave where the employer pays for the maternity leave entitling to be mother to take leave both before and after childbirth. The financial assistance is given to her whether she intends to resume work or not.

What are the benefits of Statutory maternity leave?

SMP or statutory maternity leave is provided to all employees who are pregnant at the same time the benefit of the scheme does not apply to women who are unemployed.

As a mother to be you get weekly payments according to your salary for a maximum period of thirty nine weeks. You need to consider having a budget plan so that you start expecting payments around the time of childbirth.

What is expected week of childbirth?

Planning a budget before your expected week of childbirth helps your employers to calculate from when they need to start making your payments and this weekly payments usually ends with childbirth.

What is maternity pay period?

MPP or maternity pay period is actually the time from when you start your statutory maternity pay. The most important thing is that not all payments are calculated from Sundays so the day you get your first payment counting from that day you will get the next payment exactly on the seventh day of the next week.

Who can qualify for these benefits?

To qualify for the statutory maternity leave benefits you need to meet certain guidelines:

You need to be employed with the same employer for at least 26 weeks, your earnings should be in the category for lower earnings limit for national Insurance Contribution and finally you need to be employed fifteen weeks before the EWC.

There are companies who do not pay for SMP but then they need to give it in writing the reason they want to be exempted from paying. And if you do not get the benefits you can always look for other resources to get the maternity benefits.

To get the benefits of maternity leave allowance you can always go through Jobcentre Plus you need to have a self employment registration number, your company has an SMP exemption and you need to be employed with the same employer for at least 26 weeks though there is no age limit to get the facility.

The most important thing that you need to keep in mind is that you should claim payments only after 26 weeks. Other details that you need to know are that employers pay your wages, you have the right to collect wages from more than one employer, to receive the SMP you are under no obligation to return to work, getting SMP benefits entitles you to other maternity benefits that your employer has in offer, to get the benefits all you need to do is qualify for the SMP benefits.

Under special circumstance SMP benefits are given during hospitalization, moving abroad, when you start working for a new employer. As an employee you can work even while on maternity leave and you can still get the benefits of SMP but then you will lose out of the benefits if you work for more than 10 days.