Returning to work after maternity leave in the UK: your rights

The default is that you take all 52 weeks

If you said nothing when you started maternity leave, your employer is entitled to assume you are taking the full 52 weeks, and your return date is the day after they end. Everything on this page follows from that: coming back earlier is something you have to actively arrange, and there is a notice period attached.

Eight weeks' notice to change your return date

GOV.UK's rule is short and absolute: you must give your employer at least eight weeks' notice if you want to change your return to work date. That applies to coming back early and to going back later, within your 52-week entitlement.

The rule protects you as much as your employer. It means nobody can pull you back at a fortnight's notice, and it means a company that has recruited maternity cover has time to unwind it. Diarise the eight-week point rather than trusting yourself to remember it while sleep deprived. If you miss the deadline, your employer can insist you return on the original date, or can agree to be flexible; the entitlement is theirs to waive, not yours to assume.

What job you go back to

This is where the 26-week split of Statutory Maternity Leave finally matters. Statutory Maternity Leave is 52 weeks, made up of Ordinary Maternity Leave, the first 26 weeks, and Additional Maternity Leave, the last 26.

Return at the end of Ordinary Maternity Leave and you are entitled to go back to the same job on the same terms. Return after a period of Additional Maternity Leave and you are entitled to the same job, unless it is not reasonably practicable, in which case you must be offered a suitable alternative on terms no less favourable. That is a weaker protection, and it is the reason some people time their return to the end of the first 26 weeks.

GOV.UK is clear that employment rights are protected throughout leave, including the right to pay rises and to build up holiday. A pay award made while you were away applies to you, and accrued annual leave is still yours. A common pattern is to add untaken annual leave to the end of maternity leave, which extends your time off without extending your leave entitlement; agree it in advance.

Keeping in touch days

You can work up to ten days during maternity leave without ending your leave or your Statutory Maternity Pay. These are keeping in touch days, and GOV.UK stresses that they are optional: both employee and employer have to agree, and neither can compel the other.

Agree the type of work and the pay before you go in. There is no statutory rate for a keeping in touch day, so what you get paid is a matter of negotiation, and going in for a full day's work in exchange for the day's SMP alone is a poor deal you are entitled to decline.

If you go on to take Shared Parental Leave, you get a further 20 shared parental leave in touch days, and those are in addition to the ten keeping in touch days, not instead of them.

Requesting flexible working

Every employee has the legal right to request flexible working, and since the rules changed you can make a request from your first day in a job. You can ask to change the number of hours you work, when you start or finish, the days you work, or where you work.

How the process runs

You write to your employer. The application must state the date of the request, say that it is a statutory request for flexible working, set out how you want to work flexibly and when you want to start, and say whether you have made a previous application and when.

Your employer must handle the request in a reasonable manner and must make a decision within two months, unless you agree a longer period. They must discuss the request with you before refusing it. If they agree, they must change your contract terms, and should do so no later than 28 days after approval.

You can make two statutory applications in any 12-month period. Plan accordingly: do not burn a request on an informal arrangement you could have agreed in a conversation.

When it can be refused

An employer can refuse for one of eight business reasons: extra costs that will damage the business, work that cannot be reorganised among other staff, an inability to recruit for the work, an effect on quality, an effect on performance, an inability to meet customer demand, a lack of work during the proposed times, or planned changes to the workforce.

There is no longer a statutory right of appeal, though many employers offer one. You cannot go to an employment tribunal simply because your request was refused. You can complain if the employer did not handle it in a reasonable manner, wrongly treated it as withdrawn, refused it based on incorrect facts, or treated you badly for making it. The time limit is three months.

The gap: expressing milk at work

This needs saying plainly, because people arrive at it expecting a right that does not exist. GOV.UK's guidance on employee rights when on leave sets out keeping in touch days and the return to work, and there is no statutory entitlement in Great Britain to paid breaks to breastfeed or express milk. What health and safety law requires is that employers provide suitable rest facilities for pregnant and breastfeeding workers, and employers are expected to carry out a risk assessment. A toilet is not a suitable place to express milk.

In practice this means negotiating rather than asserting. Write to your employer before you return, tell them you will be breastfeeding, and ask for a private space that is not a toilet, somewhere to store milk, and agreed break times. Do it in writing so there is a record. Refusing reasonable adjustments for a breastfeeding employee can raise sex discrimination issues even without a specific statutory break entitlement.

What to do, and in what order

Count back eight weeks from the date you want to return and put it in the calendar now. Decide whether you want any keeping in touch days and agree the pay for them first. Submit a statutory flexible working request early enough that the two-month decision window closes before your return date. Write to your employer about expressing milk before you go back, not on the first morning. And check whether any annual leave accrued during your maternity leave can be added to the end of it.