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Q: In the company there is an employee who is currently on SML. She has already taken twelve weeks of SML, and has received company maternity pay at full-pay alongside SMP. She has now requested to take three weeks’ annual leave and also remain on SML and still be paid SMP. I would like to ask whether it is okay to replace the SMP with holiday pay for the annual leave and for her to continue to be on SML? A: If the employee has returned to work then yes she can take and be paid for the annual leave that has been accrued. The employee cannot take annual leave whilst still on SML. She should have taken annual leave either before going on SML or at the end of SML, but not whilst still on SML. You can find confirmation of this on both GOV. UK and ACAS websites via the following links: http://bit.ly/2dmcUG2, and http:// bit.ly/2uHGLmx. Q: An employee will be going on maternity leave and I would like to know if we are permitted to deduct the employee’s pension contributions from the SMP she going to receive from us? A: If the employee’s pension deduction comes from her net pay then yes pension contributions can be taken from the SMP. However, if the pension is a salary sacrifice arrangement then you cannot take the pension salary sacrifice from the employee’s SMP as the employee is sacrificing salary for a higher employer pension contribution. Therefore, the employer must still pay these higher contributions based on the employee working and earning normally even though no deduction for the sacrifice can be taken from the employee. n
form SMP1 to her. However, our human resources (HR) manager has insisted that we should pay her SMP for the first two weeks of her maternity leave that she takes once her baby is born. Is this correct? A: Unfortunately, your HR manager is incorrect. If the employee is excluded from SMP because of the earnings test or the service test, then she will not be entitled to be paid any SMP for the two weeks, even though she must take at least the compulsory two weeks of maternity leave. You should issue form SMP1. The employee may be able to claim maternity allowance from Jobcentreplus, and she may also be entitled to company maternity pay. Q: I am currently looking at whether we need to report under the gender pay gap regulations for one of our companies. I understand that the snapshot date is 6 April, and so as this company at 31 March had less than 250 employees it would have been out of scope for reporting their figures. However, as of 1 April they acquired more employees which has now taken them over the 250-employee mark. As real time information returns would not have reported this until later in the month we have not received a request from HMRC to publish the gender pay gap figures for this company. Even though we have not received the formal request to publish, do we still need to report our gender pay gap figures? A: The recent guidance does refer to the number of employees as at the snapshot date; however, it also says that where the headcount drops slightly below the 250 threshold the employer should continue to report voluntarily. The guidance says that “If an employer has fewer than 250 employees on the snapshot date, they are not required to comply with the regulations but should give serious consideration to the business benefits of doing so”. So, as you have pointed out that on this date your head count was over 250 employees, even though you have not been formally requested to publish, to avoid any fines and to comply with the snapshot employee figure, it would be in your interests to publish your gender pay gap figures.
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Issue 37 | February 2018
| Professional in Payroll, Pensions and Reward |
*correct at time of publication
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