MATERNITY LEAVE REQUESTS FOR CERTIFICATES TO CONFIRM FITNESS TO RETURN TO WORK
You have asked your doctor for a certificate to declare fitness to return to work after maternity leave. Doctors do not consider that pregnancy and childbirth are a disease and therefore do not consider that you require a certificate that you are fit to return to work after childbirth. If you have poor health following childbirth, your doctor will have explained what your health problem is and will indeed have issued you with a sickness certificate.

Unnecessary requests such as this take up valuable consulting time. Your doctor would be required to levy a charge for issuing such a certificate because it is classed as private work and is not covered by the NHS. Your doctor does not wish to charge for a valueless piece of paper and therefore GPs have decided to no longer issue this certificate.

If your employer causes you difficulty over the lack of availability of this certificate, we would advise that you will have to take the matter up with your representative union as this certificate is no longer obtainable.