Requirement for notification of maternity leave letter

Where an employee has informally told you that they’re pregnant, you can use our letter to let them know when they must give official maternity notification and what they must tell you.

Maternity leave

To be eligible to take maternity leave, a pregnant employee must inform you of the following by no later than the end of the 15th week before their expected week of childbirth (EWC):

• the fact they’re pregnant and their EWC
• the date on which they intend their maternity leave to start, which must be a date no earlier than the beginning of the 11th week before the EWC.

If it’s not reasonably practicable for the employee to notify you within this timeline, they must do so as soon as is reasonably practicable.You can require the employee to give notification in writing. If, however, you don’t request written notification, they can give it verbally. Our Maternity Policy requires the employee to provide this information in writing. Once they’ve provided it, you can follow this up with our Acknowledgement of Notification of Maternity Leave Letter.

Letter content

Our Requirement for Notification of Maternity Leave Letter is for use where an employee has informally advised you that they’re pregnant, and perhaps given you an indication of when their baby is due, but they’ve not provided any information beyond that. It sets out what you now require from them, as outlined above, and when you require it. Where the employee has indicated what their EWC is, there’s an optional paragraph you can use to set out the actual date by which the information is due, but with a caveat that if their EWC changes, that date will also change. Send our letter as soon as possible after the employee has informally told you about their pregnancy.

Statutory maternity pay

To be eligible to claim statutory maternity pay (SMP), the employee must give you at least 28 days’ notice of the date they intend SMP to start, and they must supply you with a MAT B1 certificate, from a registered doctor or midwife, confirming the EWC. Note that the MAT B1 can also confirm the actual date of birth if completed after childbirth. However, the doctor or midwife isn’t permitted to issue it earlier than the 20th week before the EWC. The employee must then give it to you by no later than the end of the third week of the SMP payment period, unless they have good cause for being late, in which case they must produce it by no later than the end of the 13th week of the SMP payment period. Our letter covers this aspect too. Note that you can, if you wish, request a MAT B1 even if the employee isn’t entitled to SMP. The employee can choose to give notice for maternity leave and pay together, by no later than the end of the 15th week before their EWC, using our Maternity Leave Plan (provided this is at least 28 days before the start of their SMP) and our letter therefore encloses a copy of that plan for them to complete.