1. Employees have the statutory right to take 52 weeks' maternity leave. The first 26 weeks of leave is called "ordinary maternity leave"; the subsequent 26 weeks is called "additional maternity leave".

2. The only condition for an employee to be entitled to additional maternity leave is that she complies with simple notification requirements. The requirement to have been in continuous employment with the same employer for (roughly) nine months before her expected week of childbirth was progressively removed during 2006 and early 2007 (see Maternity/maternity leave/2006 changes ). One result is that it is possible for a woman who is pregnant when she applies for a new job to qualify for full maternity leave (as previously, if she were not taken on for the job because of her pregnancy she would be able to claim unlawful sex discrimination - see Pregnancy/rejection of job applicant because of pregnancy ).

3. A woman's contract of employment continues throughout ordinary and additional maternity leave.

4. A woman is not entitled to contractual wages or salary during either ordinary or additional maternity leave. Instead, if she qualifies, she is entitled to statutory maternity pay (''SMP'') or maternity allowance, both of which are now payable for 39 weeks. Thus entitlement to statutory pay now extends into the additional maternity leave period.

5. Until recently, a woman on additional maternity leave had fewer rights than when she was on ordinary maternity leave. However, following developments in EC law, UK law has now "upgraded" the status of a woman on AML to her status on OML. A woman whose expected week of childbirth began on or after 5th October 2008 is now entitled, with the exception of contractual wages or salary, "to the benefit of all of the terms and conditions of employment which would have applied if she had not been absent, and .... is bound, during that period, by any obligations arising under those terms and conditions .... " during both ordinary and additional maternity leave.

6. The only practical difference now between ordinary maternity leave and additional maternity leave is that the right to return to work after ordinary maternity leave is a right to return "to the job in which she was employed before her absence" whereas after additional maternity leave it is a right to return "to the job in which she was employed before her absence or, if it is not reasonably practicable for the employer to permit her to return to that job, to another job which is both suitable for her and appropriate for her to do in the circumstances".

7. The employee does not need to notify the employer that she intends to take her full entitlement to additional maternity leave. Instead, provided the employee complies with simple notification requirements, it is for the employer to assume that she will take her full entitlement and to confirm the date on which additional maternity leave will end.
   
   
8. If the employee intends to return to work earlier than the end of her additional maternity leave, she must give to her employer not less than 8 weeks' notice of the date on which she intends to return. If she fails to do so, the employer is entitled to delay her return until he has the equivalent of 8 weeks' notice, although her return cannot be delayed beyond the date when additional maternity leave would end.

9. The government has announced plans to extend the period of statutory maternity pay and maternity allowance to 52 weeks, and to introduce additional paternity leave and pay if the mother has returned to work. At present these proposals will not be implemented until 2010 at the earliest. At the end of May 2009 there have been reports that the BERR has said that all proposals to extend maternity (and paternity) leave and to allow parents to share a year’s paid maternity leave are being reviewed - certainly there are no plans to introduce the extended rights in 2009 (The Times, May 31st 2009 "Paternity leave scheme shelved by Lord Mandelson").

See also notes generally at Maternity/maternity leave , especially notes at Maternity/maternity leave/an outline of the right and/or Maternity/maternity leave/rights during absence