The Department for Work and Pensions changed the rule staff use to decide whether a career break blocks maternity allowance, citing a tribunal case. That case decided a different legal question entirely.
Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
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In short. DWP's Decision Makers' Guide Vol 10 was updated on 5 October 2026 [1]. Its own change log says paragraph 62517, which decides whether a career break counts as being "engaged in employment" for Maternity Allowance, was amended "following decision made in UA-2025-000996-MA Bartley v The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions" [2]. The full judgment, read in full, decides the start date of the maternity allowance period under regulation 2 of the Statutory Maternity Pay (General) Regulations 1986, not the employment condition in section 35(1)(b) of the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992 that paragraph 62517 exists to apply [4]. The firm rule the old paragraph gave decision-makers is gone; in its place is an instruction to ring a regional office. Two documented mistakes: four stars.
Every Maternity Allowance claim where a woman's 66-week test period includes a career break is decided against paragraph 62517 of the Department for Work and Pensions' Decision Makers' Guide, Volume 10 [3]. The guide was reissued on 5 October 2026, and its own summary of changes names exactly one reason for the amendment to that paragraph: a tribunal decision handed down in June [2]. Read that tribunal decision in full, and it does not answer the question paragraph 62517 exists to settle.
A firm rule becomes a phone call to head office
Before 5 October, DMG 62517 told decision-makers plainly how to treat a career break: "a woman who is on unpaid leave for another reason (for example a career break) is not engaged in employment" [6]. That single sentence, archived by the Wayback Machine on 13 February 2026, let any decision-maker apply the employment condition in section 35(1)(b) of the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992, which requires a claimant to have "been engaged in employment as an employed or self-employed earner for any part of the week in the case of at least 26 of the 66 weeks immediately preceding the expected week of confinement" [5], without referring the case anywhere.
The 5 October text reads differently. The word "career break" has gone, and so has the certainty: "a woman who is on unpaid leave for another reason may be considered as not engaged in employment (Please consider contacting DMA Leeds for guidance on this issue)" [3]. It is the only sentence in the 47-page chapter that tells a decision-maker to ring a named internal team rather than apply a rule. DWP's own change log states the reason in one line: "removal of wording 'career breaks' following decision made in UA-2025-000996-MA Bartley v The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions" [2].
The case DWP blames decided something else
UA-2025-000996-MA, reported as Bartley v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions [2026] UKUT 251 (AAC), was decided by Upper Tribunal Judge Citron on 29 June 2026 [4] [7]. Heidi Bartley had already been found entitled to Maternity Allowance; the dispute was about when her maternity allowance period started, because she had been outside Great Britain until shortly after her baby was born and was disqualified from payment until her return [4]. The tribunal's own summary states the question as "whether the relevant regulation applied" (regulation 2 of the Statutory Maternity Pay (General) Regulations 1986), so that the period could start on the date she notified her employer rather than defaulting to 11 weeks before the expected birth [4]. Nowhere in the 27-page decision does the tribunal consider section 35(1)(b)'s employment condition, the 66-week test period, or whether 26 weeks' work had been shown; that question was not before it.
The judgment does discuss career breaks, but to answer regulation 2(1): whether Bartley "ceased to work" for her employer "in accordance with" her notice, even though she had been on a career break with her employer at the time [4]. Applying the earlier case of Wade v North Yorkshire Police, the tribunal held that "the situation with a career break is similar to that of having ceased employment" because "mutual obligations within the employment sphere are suspended" and "there is sometimes an agreement that the employee will not work for someone else" (paragraph 39 onward) [4]. If that reasoning carries any implication for DMG 62517's different question at all, it points the same way as the rule DWP just removed: a career break looks like not being at work, not like a borderline case needing a call to DMA Leeds.
Credit where due
Not every change in this update is weak. The same revision log records a fix to paragraph 62524, the rule for averaging a claimant's earnings over the 13 weeks of her test period, and this one genuinely clears up a contradiction [2]. The old Note 1 told decision-makers a claimant "doesn't need to have received a payment in each of the chosen 13 weeks" and then, one sentence later, that "they need to have earnings covering each of the 13 weeks" [6], two instructions that cannot both be followed. The new text drops the contradictory sentence and states plainly in the main paragraph that earnings "can be calculated and averaged across those 13 weeks including weeks with zero earnings where there are no higher earning weeks available, so long as the average across the 13 weeks is equal to or above the MA threshold" [3]. That is an improvement a decision-maker can actually apply, and it did not need a tribunal case to justify it.
The claims, tested
| The document's own words | What the record shows | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| DMG 62517's amendment follows "decision made in UA-2025-000996-MA Bartley v The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions" [2] | The Bartley judgment decides the start date of the maternity allowance period under regulation 2 of the SMP (General) Regulations 1986; it never addresses section 35(1)(b)'s employment condition, the provision DMG 62516-62517 applies [4] | The cited authority does not decide the question the paragraph answers |
| The amended paragraph replaces "is not engaged in employment" with "may be considered as not engaged in employment (Please consider contacting DMA Leeds for guidance on this issue)" [3] | Bartley's own reasoning on career breaks, at paragraph 39, treats a career break as "similar to that of having ceased employment", the same direction as the rule it replaced, not a reason for new uncertainty [4] | A published, self-applying rule became an unpublished, case-by-case one, without a legal basis for the change |
Verdict
Four stars, from two documented mistakes. This is not a finding that DWP has got the underlying law wrong, or that any claimant has been wrongly refused Maternity Allowance because of it; the one part of this update that did rest on real legal analysis, the fix to the 13-week earnings test at paragraph 62524, is accurate and overdue. The finding is narrower and still concrete: a government guide that tells frontline staff how to decide a benefit claim changed a published, self-contained rule into a referral to an internal team, and the single reason it gave for doing so, in its own words, does not hold up against the case it names. A woman mid-career-break, reading this guidance to work out her own position before she claims, can no longer find an answer in it. She can only find a phone number for her decision-maker to ring.
The star score counts two documented mistakes: DMG 62517's change log cites Upper Tribunal case UA-2025-000996-MA (Bartley v SSWP) as the reason for removing "career break" wording from the employment condition test, when that judgment in fact decides a different statutory question, the start date of the maternity allowance period under regulation 2 of the Statutory Maternity Pay (General) Regulations 1986, and never considers section 35(1)(b)'s employment condition at all; and the resulting change replaces a firm, publicly readable rule with a discretionary standard tied to an unpublished internal referral process (contacting DMA Leeds), removing the only guidance a claimant or adviser outside DWP could previously read for themselves. Two falls in the 1 to 3 band: four stars; the bands are on the ratings page. This piece makes no finding about paragraph 62524's earnings-averaging fix, which is accurate and resolves a genuine internal contradiction in the prior text, and no finding that any individual Maternity Allowance decision under the new paragraph 62517 has been wrongly made. Checked directly against the DMG Vol 10 Chapter 62 PDF and Summary of Changes PDF as published 5 October 2026, a 13 February 2026 Wayback Machine capture of the prior Chapter 62 PDF, the full 27-page Bartley v SSWP judgment (UA-2025-000996-MA, [2026] UKUT 251 (AAC)), its gov.uk decision page, and section 35 of the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992 on legislation.gov.uk (all fetched 6 October 2026).
Sources
- Decision makers' guide: Vol 10: Benefits for incapacity, disability, maternity and bereavement: staff guide, Department for Work and Pensions, publication page, updated 5 October 2026
- DMG Vol 10: Summary of changes from January 2022, Department for Work and Pensions, October 2026
- DMG Vol 10 Ch 62: Maternity benefits, Department for Work and Pensions, as published 5 October 2026
- Heidi Bartley v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, UA-2025-000996-MA, [2026] UKUT 251 (AAC), Upper Tribunal Administrative Appeals Chamber, decided 29 June 2026
- Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992, section 35, legislation.gov.uk
- DMG Vol 10 Ch 62: Maternity benefits, 13 February 2026 capture, Wayback Machine, Internet Archive
- Heidi Bartley v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions: [2026] UKUT 251 (AAC), gov.uk Administrative Appeals Tribunal decisions, decision page