An employee should resign in the normal way, in line with the notice period stated in their employment contract. If you resign during your maternity leave, you do not have to go to work during your notice period, you can remain on maternity leave.

Maternity pay lasts for 39 weeks but maternity leave extends to 52 weeks (the last 13 weeks is usually unpaid). An employee is entitled to remain on maternity leave for up to 52 weeks and resign towards the end of their maternity leave period if they decide that they are unable to return to work.

An employee will continue to accrue all of their contractual benefits, (with the exception of remuneration), during maternity leave. Therefore, these benefits, including annual leave, will run until the date that the employee’s contract terminates i.e. at the end of the notice period. An employee will be entitled to be paid for any untaken annual leave at the end of the notice period.

The position is slightly different regarding bank holidays and will depend on what is stated in the employee’s contract of employment. If the contract specifies that public holidays will be paid, the pregnant employee should be allowed to take this holiday at another time, as affirmed by the ECJ in Gomez v Continental Industrias del Caucho SA, ECJ C-342/01. Therefore, by the same virtue, the employee will be entitled to be paid for untaken bank holidays at the end of her notice period. However, if the contract states that an employee is entitled to annual leave, not including bank holidays (and this is compliant with the statutory minimum annual leave period of 5.6 weeks for full-time workers), the employee will not be entitled to receive payment for bank holidays that fell during the maternity leave period.