LRD guides and handbook June 2014

Law at Work 2014

Chapter 8

Who is eligible for Statutory Maternity Leave?

[ch 8: pages 225-226]

Subject to certain notification rules set out below, all female employees are entitled to 52 weeks’ maternity leave. There is no service requirement and no requirement to work a certain number of hours or reach any particular hourly pay threshold. Only employees are eligible, not the self-employed or agency workers. For guidance as to who is an employee, see Chapter 2.

Where a woman is self-employed and as a result has no right to maternity leave or pay, it is not a breach of European law to deny her employed partner and the biological father of the child the right to paid maternity leave (Montull v Instituto Nacional de la Seguridad Social Case C-5/12, [2013] WLR (D) 354). The woman’s partner has no free-standing right to take leave of she does not qualify, even if he is a direct employee. For future proposals on shared leave, see the box on page 243.