Buddy says:

The EAT in Blundell v Governing Body of St Andrew’s Catholic Primary School UKEAT/0329/06/RN considered for the first time an employee’s right to return to the same job after maternity leave and held that the purpose of the Maternity and Parental Leave Regulations 1999 (MPL Regulations) was ‘to provide that an employee comes back to a work situation as near as possible to that she left and  thereby avoid adding to the burdens that will inevitably exist on mothers with young children’.

Employer Information:
Regulation 18(1) and 18(2) of the MPL Regulations state that following maternity leave an employee is entitled to return to the job in which the employee was employed prior to taking her maternity leave.

The EAT held in Blundell that Regulation 18 of the MPL Regulations meant that the employer is required to do more than simply honour the existing terms of the employee’s contract on her return to work.

There are however, 2 situations when the employer may place the employee in an alternative role:

• Where the employee has taken additional maternity leave and it is not reasonably practicable for the employer to allow the employee to return to the same job (Regulation 18(2) of the MPL Regulations); and
• Where the job itself is variable (and such variation has in fact been applied in practice) as the EAT held in the above case.