If the employee is the mother, she must give her department at least eight weeks’ written notice to end her maternity leave before she or her partner can take SPL. This is the ‘curtailment notice’. The notice must state the date her maternity leave will end. Notice can be given before or after the child’s birth but maternity leave cannot end until at least two weeks after the birth. The pro-forma on the right-hand side can be used for this purpose.
The curtailment notice is binding and cannot usually be revoked. The employee may only revoke a curtailment notice if maternity leave has not yet ended and one of the following applies:
- the employee realises that neither she nor the other parent are in fact eligible for SPL or ShPP, in which case she may revoke the curtailment notice in writing up to eight weeks after it was given
- if the curtailment notice was given before giving birth, then the employee may revoke it in writing up to eight weeks after it was given, or up to six weeks after birth, whichever is later
- if the other parent has died
Once an employee has revoked her curtailment notice she will be unable to opt back into the SPL scheme, unless she revoked it in one of the circumstances described above.
The other parent may be eligible to take SPL before the mother’s maternity leave ends, provided that the mother has given the curtailment notice.