Maternity pay

You need to check your contract/employee handbook/maternity policy. Minimum they can pay you is SMP (about £180 a week), and you’re right the last 3 months is unpaid. Anything above this is at the discretion of your company which often decreases at 3/6 months. Maybe call HR as they’ll be the best to advise you xx

Depends on the company policy. Mine has a policy of 12 weeks full pay and 6 weeks half pay after that it's 184 a week or your average weekly earnings whichever is lower. The last 3 months is indeed unpaid x

As someone else has said, you need to look at the maternity policy for your employer. Lots of people get enhanced maternity, which could be full pay or it might go down in increments each month. I only got 6 weeks full pay and now every month, my pay decreases. By next month, I will be on statutory, which I why I have to return to work in January. Being able to take 9 months or a year of mat leave, doesn't mean you'll be paid full pay for that amount of time sadly!

The first 6 weeks will be paid at 90% of your normal weekly wage. The following 33 weeks will either be 90% of your weekly wage OR £184 a week (they use the lowest figure). Then the last weeks you take off are unpaid. This can be overrun by any employee benefit etc.

FYI for future (or anyone pregnant) you can request OMP to be spread out - I got less but over longer so didn't have £0 at end. Can't do this for SMP though

Every company is different - when you logged your mat leave with HR they sent me the policy so you could see what you will be paid. I do get some enhancements from my work but only for first 6m, then SMP for 3 months then nothing for the final 3 months. There is no way I can take 12m off cos I need some money coming in towards our giant mortgage! When when Im on SMP I need to have saved a load of money up beforehand to top it up. Its frustrating - I dont get how SMP is a viable pay for a parent to live on for 3 months!!

https://www.gov.uk/maternity-pay-leave/pay

It will depend on your employer and your contract. My employer offers 6 months full pay, 3 months statutory maternity pay and 3 months unpaid.

If it’s just smp you can use there calculator and it will show you exactly the payments and when

Maternity pay and maternity leave are 2 separate things. SMP only lasts 9 months then your employer may offer some maternity pay but that depends on your contract. Yes you can legally take 12 months off and have a job to return to but they don’t have to pay you for the whole 12 months

same as above, sounds like you’ve got enhanced maternity pay from your company (the 6 months). once the enchanted pay ends then you get SMP and then the final 3 months will be unpaid.

It's probably because your employer was enhancing it for a while, and now you've dropped down to SMP.

When I go off my employer will give me a breakdown of how much I will be paid each month. I'm surprised they haven't done this as it's really useful to know. But as others have said, likely you were on enhanced pay and now it's statutory.

If u take a year do u not get maternity pay for the year?? Xxx

@Georgia it depends on your employer, SMP (statutory gov mat pay) is only paid for a certain length of time. If your work pays mat leave they will take an average of your wage over a 6week period (usually) & you will get that but again over a set period. I'm NHS & requested my OMP over 12months instead of 9, so paid less each month but at least didn't have 3 months of no pay.

@Georgia not always. Pay and leave are different and depends on your contract. I work in the NHS amd we get 9 months pay (6 months full and 3 months half) then it goes down to nothing but you can spread it out over the year. So just depends what your employer offers. You can take a year off regardless of pay and your employer cannot fill your job

Ahh right. I’m still deffo takin the year either way 😂🤣hopefully my work will just spread it out over a year and I’ll just get less each month 🙉🙈

@Georgia I don't think they can do that with SMP.

@Georgia they can’t spread SMP only any employer pay

@Louise is this trust dependent? I’m employed by the NHS and only got 8 weeks full pay followed by 18 weeks half pay plus SMP.. after this is drops down to SMP only

@Emily that's correct - NHS get 8 weeks full pay, 18 weeks half + SMP...

@Emily sorry I worded my reply very confusing. What you have said is correct but I spread mine so I got smaller payments for longer but my SMO couldn’t be spread so my pay did drop when SMP ended