In Carnival Plc v Hunter [2024] EAT 167, the EAT considered whether an employer was obliged to offer suitable alternative employment to an employee who was on maternity leave during a redundancy exercise. Under reg 10 of the Maternity and Parental Leave etc. Regulations 1999 (SI 1999/3312) (MAPLE), an employee on maternity leave is entitled to be offered any suitable alternative vacancy if their role is made redundant. The claimant in Carnival argued that when the number of people undertaking her role reduced from 21 to 16 roles, she should have been offered one of the remaining roles in accordance with reg 10 of MAPLE. However, the EAT said that the decision to reduce headcount meant that no suitable alternative vacancies had been created for the purposes of reg 10; the remaining roles were pre-existing roles which were occupied by employees who had scored higher than the claimant during the redundancy exercise. The obligation to ‘slot’ a maternity leave employee into a suitable alternative vacancy under reg 10 of MAPLE does not arise until after the maternity leave employee’s role is redundant and if a suitable alternative vacancy has been created. This means that where there is a conventional redundancy situation, reg 10 of MAPLE does not override a valid selection process.

Jo-Anne Graham and Nicola Taylor, Government Legal Department