NHS Maternity Pay Calculator

The standard NHS maternity leave entitlement is 52 weeks. Of those, 39 weeks are paid — 8 weeks at full pay, 18 weeks at half pay plus SMP (capped so the total never exceeds your normal full pay), and 13 weeks at SMP only — and the final 13 weeks are unpaid, though you remain on maternity leave with your job protected throughout. This structure is set out in Section 15 of the NHS Terms and Conditions of Service Handbook and applies if you meet the qualifying service condition below.

To get the enhanced NHS (occupational) element of maternity pay, you need 12 months' continuous NHS service — with one or more NHS employers, not necessarily just your current trust — by the start of the 11th week before your expected week of childbirth (EWC). This is a fixed date relative to your due date, not your leave start date, so it's worth checking your service position with HR early in your pregnancy rather than close to when you plan to give notice.

You won't get the occupational (enhanced) element of NHS maternity pay, but you may still be entitled to Statutory Maternity Pay (SMP) or Maternity Allowance under separate, UK-wide statutory rules that don't depend on NHS length of service — SMP has its own, generally lower, qualifying-service threshold under general UK employment law. The calculator on this page shows this plainly rather than hiding it — it doesn't model SMP's own structure in detail, since that's a separate, well-established statutory scheme, not something specific to the NHS.

Generally, no — continuous NHS service for this purpose is usually recognised across different NHS employers, not reset by moving trusts, provided there isn't a significant break in service. This is a genuinely common source of confusion, so if you've moved trusts recently and are unsure whether your full service history counts, ask your current trust's HR team to confirm your continuous service date rather than assuming either way.

During weeks 9-26, you receive half your normal pay plus SMP (or Maternity Allowance) on top — but the combined total is capped so it never exceeds what you'd have received on full pay for that week. In practice this cap rarely bites unless SMP itself is unusually high relative to your normal pay, but it's built into the calculator's maths so the figures you see already reflect it.

Because the statutory weekly SMP rate changes almost every tax year (usually each April), and hardcoding a specific figure into a calculator risks it going stale within months — showing you a confidently wrong number. Instead, we ask you to check the current rate at gov.uk/maternity-pay-leave/pay and enter it yourself, so the figures you see are always based on the real current rate rather than whatever happened to be true when this tool was built.

Yes — both the occupational element and SMP are treated as normal earnings for Income Tax and National Insurance purposes, and are paid through payroll in the usual way, so the figures on your payslip during maternity leave are gross amounts before tax, NI and pension deductions, not the net amount that lands in your account. This calculator shows gross weekly and monthly figures for clarity of the underlying structure; use the NHS Pay Calculator separately if you want a take-home estimate on your normal pay.

The structure — full pay, then half pay plus SMP, then SMP only, then unpaid — is the same regardless of your contracted hours. What changes is your "normal weekly pay" figure itself, which should already reflect your actual part-time earnings (or your average earnings over the reference period) rather than a full-time equivalent salary. Enter your real part-time weekly pay (or use the annual salary toggle with your actual part-time annual salary) and the calculator will produce correctly pro-rated figures without any separate part-time adjustment needed.

Working a Keeping in Touch (KIT) day doesn't end your maternity leave or, generally, affect your maternity pay for that week — they're specifically designed to let you do occasional paid work during leave (for example, a mandatory training update) without those consequences. The exact number of days available and how they interact with your specific pay period is set nationally and worth confirming with your trust's HR team before agreeing to work one, since this calculator doesn't model KIT day pay separately.

The occupational (enhanced) element of NHS maternity pay is typically conditional on returning to work for the NHS for a minimum period afterwards — if you don't return, or don't return for long enough, your trust can usually recover some or all of that occupational element (not the statutory SMP element, which you keep regardless of whether you return). The exact condition and repayment calculation is set out in your trust's maternity policy, so check it before deciding whether or when to return — this calculator's Pro return-to-work comparison models foregone pay from returning early, but not this separate repayment risk from not returning at all.