Who is eligible for Statutory Maternity Leave?

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.