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Being made redundant whilst on maternity leave
I am on maternity leave and am about to be made redundant (it is definite as the company will be closing). I was due to return to work at the start of my 17th week, but as this coincides with when the redundancies will be officially announced, I am able to withdraw my offer to return and receive the full 39 weeks of statutory maternity pay (SMP).
In the redundancy proposal letter it states ‘The notice period will be calculated as the period from 13th July to 31st July plus your statutory minimum notice period’. After contacting my boss about whether I would receive SMP, he emailed me saying ‘If you were to choose to carry on with maternity leave and you were to be made redundant you would get maternity pay up to 31 July, the date on which you would be made redundant.
At this point you would have used 19 weeks of maternity leave. Therefore, on redundancy, you would be entitled to your statutory notice period of two weeks normal salary, plus a lump sum of SMP equal to (39 weeks less 19 weeks = 20 weeks x £124.85 = £2,497), plus the redundancy pay of 10 weeks times normal salary, plus whatever you choose to do on the options.
If you chose this route you would lose out on full salary for the period from 12 July to 31 July as you would be getting SMP instead’. Is this correct? I thought that as 13-31 July was a notice period, I would be payed for that in addition to the statutory two weeks.
However, I know nothing about redundancy and so need help. They want my decision in two days’ time.
Redundancy and maternity leave
I have had a look at your query regarding redundancy and maternity leave. In short, I do not believe that they are correct in what they are saying.
The first point they make is that you would get maternity pay only up to 31 July, the date you are made redundant.
In actual fact, I had understood that if you are made redundant you would be able to get a lump sum of SMP paid for the remainder of the maternity leave that you would have received if you had been there for the whole time.
They would need to contact the local office where they ordinarily recover a large portion of SMP and usually this is possible.
Regarding the notice pay, I believe that you would not get your notice pay at full rate and that instead for your notice period you would simply be entitled to SMP.
I hope that this helps.
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