School of Health & Wellbeing

Guidelines and policies

Clarification of maternity leave and pay for staff on open ended contracts with funding end date and staff on fixed term contracts

This is to provide a reminder of clarification from HR on the maternity leave and pay entitlement policy for staff on an open ended contract with funding end date or fixed term contracts.

The information detailed in the current maternity leave policy for staff on open ended contracts with a funding end date is not easily interpretable.

HR therefore clarified this information (22 January 2016) as follows:

"All members of staff, whether on open ended, funding end date or fixed term contracts, are eligible to apply for maternity/paternity/shared parental leave provided the meet the eligibility requirements outlined in each policy.

For maternity leave, all eligible employees are entitled to take up to 52 weeks maternity leave. Entitlement to enhanced or statutory maternity pay is determined by length of service.

If a staff member’s funding end date falls during their maternity leave period, and the funding will not be extended, their contract will be terminated in line with the funding end date and they will leave the employment of the University on that date. The staff member will receive their contractual entitlement to either enhanced or statutory maternity pay up until their leaving date. Thereafter, for the remainder of their 52 week maternity period, they will receive statutory maternity pay. In these circumstances, there will no requirement for the staff member to return to the University following their maternity leave and they will not be required to repay any part of the non-statutory element of their maternity pay. If a staff member has more than one year’s funding in place at the time of taking maternity leave, then generally their contract will be extended to account for the period of maternity leave. This will however, be dependent upon how the post is funded. Generally if the funder does not cover maternity costs, then the university will endeavour to cover these costs."

If you have any further questions regarding this, please contact MVLS HR, HR at College of Social Sciences or the chair of the SHW Athena Swan maternity, paternity, parental and carer issues group.