Maternity Pay and Maternity Allowance for Doctors: 2026/27 Guide

Maternity pay and maternity allowance are two different payments, and your employment status decides which one you get. A hospital doctor or salaried GP receives Statutory Maternity Pay from an employer, £194.32 a week for 2026/27 after the first six weeks. A GP partner or freelance locum claims Maternity Allowance from the Department for Work and Pensions instead, between £27 and £194.32 a week for up to 39 weeks.

Which doctors get maternity pay, and which get maternity allowance?

Doctors move between employment statuses more than most professions. The same person can sit in a different row of the table below from one pregnancy to the next. A salaried GP is an employee, a GP partner is self-employed on a share of practice profit, and a freelance locum is usually a sole trader.

Which maternity payment applies, by working structure, 2026/27

Working structure	What applies	Who pays it
Hospital doctor or salaried GP with 26 weeks' service	Statutory Maternity Pay, plus the NHS occupational maternity scheme where the 12-month test is met, under Agenda for Change or the equivalent medical and dental terms	The employing trust or practice
GP partner	Maternity Allowance	Department for Work and Pensions
Freelance GP locum trading as a sole trader	Maternity Allowance	Department for Work and Pensions
Locum through a limited company taking a salary	Statutory Maternity Pay where the earnings and service tests are met, otherwise Maternity Allowance	The company, or the Department for Work and Pensions
Salaried GP who also locums	Statutory Maternity Pay from the salaried post; the locum income creates no second entitlement	The employing practice

If you are in one of the two self-employed rows, one further rule decides the size of your award. It catches doctors who have done nothing wrong, and it is the most expensive thing on this page.

What is maternity allowance, and who is eligible for it?

Maternity Allowance is a state benefit paid by the Department for Work and Pensions to people who cannot get Statutory Maternity Pay. It does not come from a practice, a trust or the NHS Pension Scheme. You cannot claim it alongside SMP, because eligibility decides which one applies and you do not get to choose.

The question of who is eligible for maternity allowance has one answer for the self-employed and another for employees. If you are self-employed you qualify by having been registered with HMRC for at least 26 of the 66 weeks before the baby is due. If you were employed inside that window you qualify by having earned, or been treated as earning, £30 a week or more in at least 13 weeks of that employment.

The Department for Work and Pensions defines the maternity allowance test period in its technical guidance: "The test period is the period of 66 weeks up to and including the week before the week your baby is due." Everything about eligibility and amount is measured inside it.

That length matters more for doctors than for most claimants, because 66 weeks reaches back through a career change. If you left a trust post nine months ago to locum, those employed weeks still count towards the 26. So does a spell of salaried work before a partnership started.

One further fact is worth knowing before you compare Maternity Allowance with anything else. The Department for Work and Pensions technical guidance states that "you do not pay income tax or NI contributions on Maternity Allowance". Statutory Maternity Pay is treated as earnings and has tax and National Insurance deducted from it. Comparing the two headline rates without that difference understates Maternity Allowance.

How much is maternity allowance in 2026/27?

Maternity Allowance rates, 2026/27, from gov.uk read on 26 August 2026

Route	Weekly amount	Length
Employed or recently stopped working	£194.32, or 90% of average weekly earnings if lower	Up to 39 weeks
Self-employed, Class 2 paid in 13 or more of the 66 weeks	£194.32	Up to 39 weeks
Self-employed, no Class 2 paid	£27	Up to 39 weeks
Unpaid work for a spouse's or civil partner's business	£27	Up to 14 weeks

The maximum maternity allowance is therefore £194.32 a week for 2026/27, the same headline figure as Statutory Maternity Pay. Payments reach your bank or building society account every two weeks or every four weeks.

Why Class 2 National Insurance decides your maternity allowance rate

A pair of rules that are individually sensible combine into a result that surprises almost every self-employed doctor who meets it.

The first is that Class 2 National Insurance has not been a required payment since 6 April 2024. If your profits are at or above the Small Profits Threshold you are treated as having paid it, and your state pension record is protected without any money changing hands. There is nothing to pay and nothing to do, and for almost every purpose that is the end of it.

The second is that Maternity Allowance is assessed on Class 2 actually paid, not on Class 2 treated as paid. gov.uk puts it without qualification: "If you've not paid any Class 2 National Insurance contributions, you'll be entitled to £27 per week Maternity Allowance."

Put the two together and the current default position for a self-employed GP is a claim with no Class 2 weeks in it. That is £27 a week instead of £194.32, a gap of £167.32 a week for up to 39 weeks. Voluntary Class 2 costs £3.65 a week for 2026/27.

Take Dr R, an illustrative freelance GP locum with profits of around £70,000, whose baby is due in June 2027. She has been registered with HMRC throughout, so she clears the 26-week test comfortably.

With Class 2 paid in at least 13 of the 66 weeks before the due date, she is assessed at £194.32 a week, which is £7,578.48 across 39 weeks. With no Class 2 paid, the position she is in by default, she is assessed at £27 a week, or £1,053 across the same 39 weeks. The difference is £6,525.48.

Voluntary Class 2 at £3.65 a week costs £47.45 for thirteen weeks and £189.80 for a full 52. What changes the answer is the number of Class 2 weeks, because fewer than 13 places her somewhere between the two figures.

None of that makes it a counsel of despair. gov.uk states that "you can top-up your contributions to increase your Maternity Allowance after you apply", and that where contributions are being linked to a claim, "your payments will be increased and backdated if necessary". So if you find this out after claiming, you are not stuck at £27.

If you are planning a pregnancy you have the most room to act, because the 66-week test period reaches back roughly 15 months from the due date.

How long is maternity allowance paid for, and how often?

Maternity allowance is paid for up to 39 weeks on both main routes, and for 14 weeks on the spouse's-business route. The Maternity Allowance Period can begin from the 11th week before the expected week of childbirth. It starts automatically if a pregnancy-related absence from work falls in the four weeks before the due week.

How often is maternity allowance paid? The technical guidance is specific: it "can be paid every 2 weeks or every 4 weeks directly into your bank or building society". You claim on form MA1, the maternity allowance claim pack, from 26 weeks of pregnancy onwards and no earlier.

Statutory Maternity Leave runs to 52 weeks and the payment runs to 39, so the last 13 weeks of a full year off are unpaid on either route. If you are self-employed, that unpaid quarter lands in a year when your trading profit has already dropped. That is a cashflow problem, and it is best solved in the year before the leave.

What is the difference between maternity pay and maternity allowance?

The difference between maternity pay and maternity allowance is who pays it, what qualifies for it and how it is taxed. Statutory Maternity Pay comes from an employer. It needs 26 weeks of continuous employment running into the qualifying week, which is the 15th week before the expected week of childbirth, plus average earnings of at least £129 a week.

That £129 threshold is the Lower Earnings Limit, £6,708 a year for 2026/27, expressed weekly. SMP then pays 90% of average weekly earnings for the first six weeks and £194.32 a week for the remaining 33.

Maternity Allowance comes from the state, needs 26 weeks of registered self-employment or employment inside a 66-week window, and pays a flat weekly amount with no 90% period at the front. It is not taxable, and SMP is.

Where an employer decides SMP is not due it must issue form SMP1 to whichever deadline falls earlier: within seven days of making that decision, or within 28 days of the day you gave notice of your intended absence, or of the birth if that has already happened. Regulation 25A(4) of the Statutory Maternity Pay (General) Regulations 1986 sets both limbs, and the 28-day limb is the one that bites when an employer sits on the decision. That form is what the Department for Work and Pensions expects to see with your Maternity Allowance claim. If you are moving between a salaried post and locum work near the qualifying week, get that decision in writing early. The two claims go to different bodies on different timetables.

What the NHS occupational scheme adds on top of statutory maternity pay

If you are employed by the NHS, an occupational maternity scheme sits on top of SMP and includes it, rather than replacing it. Section 15 of the NHS Terms and Conditions of Service Handbook carries the scheme for Agenda for Change staff, and Section 15.21 sets out four blocks of pay.

That handbook does not itself cover doctors, because Agenda for Change excludes staff within the remit of the Doctors' and Dentists' Review Body. Equivalent provisions reach doctors through their own terms instead: Schedule 13 for resident doctors and dentists in training, Schedule 21 for specialty doctors, Schedule 22 for associate specialists and Schedule 24 of the 2003 consultant contract for consultants. The pay blocks and the service test are the same in each, so the figures below apply whichever contract you are on.

The first eight weeks are full pay less any SMP or Maternity Allowance received. The next 18 are half pay plus SMP, capped so the total does not exceed full pay. Then come 13 weeks of SMP alone and 13 weeks unpaid, making 52 weeks.

Whether the scheme applies at all turns on two conditions, and both are commonly confused with the statutory tests. You need 12 months' continuous service with one or more NHS employers, measured at the beginning of the 11th week before the expected week of childbirth. Service aggregates across trusts and practices, which helps if you have rotated.

Separately, you must confirm that you intend to return to work with an NHS employer for at least three months afterwards. That return condition has a financial tail, because it creates a recoverable-overpayment risk if plans change. It is worth raising early, while leave is still being planned.

Because the first eight weeks are full pay less SMP and the next 18 are half pay plus SMP, a change in the SMP rate moves the split between the employer and the statutory scheme. It does not move your total in the first 26 weeks.

What happens to your NHS pension during maternity leave?

If you are a scheme member, the position on maternity leave and pension contributions is better than most people assume. NHSBSA states that a member "can continue to be pensionable throughout any period of absence for maternity, paternity, parental or adoption", and that contributions are taken whether the leave is paid or unpaid unless the member opts out.

The mechanics of pension contributions during maternity leave are straightforward. You pay at the tier you were on before the leave, calculated on the pay you actually receive, whether that is full pay, half pay or the statutory payment. On the benefit side, NHSBSA's factsheet says under its "Part time members" heading that "Pensionable earnings for benefit purposes will be based on your normal level of pay", so the clearest published statement of that protection is written for part-time members. If you are full time, confirm the position with your employer rather than assuming the same sentence covers you.

On employer pension contributions during maternity leave, NHSBSA is explicit: "if you continue to pay contributions, your employers' contributions will also continue based on your full rate of pay", at 23.7% of pensionable pay. Arrears built up during unpaid leave can be collected on your return, within a reasonable period.

The scheme therefore protects your accrual, which makes opting out during maternity leave an unusually expensive way to cut an outgoing. If that decision is on the table, read what opting out of the NHS Pension Scheme actually costs first.

Your member contribution rate is tiered, meaning it depends on which pay band you fall into, and those bands were uplifted on 1 April 2026; they sit on the tiered contribution calculator. A leave year also changes your pension input amount, the growth in the value of your pension over the year that the annual allowance measures, which is covered on the annual allowance calculator.

Salary sacrifice pension and maternity leave: the qualifying weeks that decide it

Statutory Maternity Pay is calculated on average weekly earnings across a set period ending in the 15th week before the expected week of childbirth. Anything that reduces your gross pay in those weeks reduces your SMP for the whole 39 weeks that follow.

HMRC says so directly. Salary sacrifice "can affect the amount of statutory pay an employee receives" and "can cause some employees to lose their entitlement altogether", and it can also affect entitlement to earnings-related benefits including Maternity Allowance. Where a sacrifice pushes average weekly earnings below the Lower Earnings Limit, no statutory payment is due at all.

If you have an electric-car or additional-pension sacrifice running, that makes the arrangement a timing decision. The weeks that matter fall around six months before the birth, which is early enough that most people have not started thinking about maternity pay yet.

A reduction in taxable pay across a part-year also moves your adjusted net income, which has thresholds of its own and is covered on the adjusted net income guide.

Do keeping in touch days affect maternity allowance?

On keeping in touch days maternity allowance follows a similar rule to SMP, with one real difference. The technical guidance allows work "as an employed or self-employed person for up to 10 days during your Maternity Allowance Period without losing any MA". Work beyond 10 days costs at least a day of allowance for each extra day, and you must report any work promptly.

The difference sits in who decides. On SMP, employer and employee must both agree to a KIT day. On maternity allowance, KIT days are yours to call: if you are self-employed, the guidance says you are "free to decide for yourself whether to do any work or not".

A locum session taken during the Maternity Allowance Period counts as one of the 10 days however short it is, so half a morning of work uses a whole day. Within the NHS scheme, KIT days do not break the period of leave and are pensioned on the reduced special-leave earnings.

Can a locum GP get maternity allowance and keep their pension?

A freelance locum can claim Maternity Allowance on the self-employed route, subject to the Class 2 point above. The pension side is where the position is genuinely worse than for employed colleagues, and it is under-written everywhere.

NHSBSA's own factsheet is blunt: "any type of parental leave does not apply to locum practitioners". The protections described above, contributions continuing on unpaid leave and benefits building on normal pay, are provisions for employed members. As a freelance locum you contribute to the NHS scheme only against work actually done, so a period of leave is a gap in pensionable service.

Meanwhile two administrative deadlines keep running through the leave, and both belong to work you did before it started. Locum forms A and B record and pay pension contributions on freelance locum GP earnings, and go to Primary Care Support England (PCSE), the body that administers GP pension records and payments in England. Wales uses the local health board, and Scotland and Northern Ireland have separate arrangements.

Those forms carry a 10-week rule: work that ended more than 10 weeks ago cannot be pensioned at all. A missed window is a permanent loss of accrual rather than a late-filing penalty. Type 1 partners and Type 2 salaried GPs, meaning practice partners and employed GPs, file annual pension certificates to a 28 February deadline a year in arrears, and going on leave does not move it.

The guide to locum forms A and B covers the submission mechanics.

Is there such a thing as self employed paternity pay?

No, and this is the sharpest asymmetry in the whole topic. Statutory Paternity Pay requires the claimant to "be employed by your employer up to the date of birth", to have 26 weeks of continuous employment and to earn at least £129 a week. There is no self-employed route into it, and no benefit that does for fathers and partners what Maternity Allowance does for mothers.

So a self-employed GP partner or locum whose partner is expecting takes unpaid time, and the household budget carries it. The same asymmetry runs through adoption: Statutory Adoption Pay is an employee payment with no self-employed equivalent, and shared parental leave needs the other parent to satisfy an employment and earnings test.

In a two-doctor household where one is salaried and one is a partner, leave planning is usually better built around the employed parent's entitlements. The GP partner versus salaried GP comparison sets out the wider trade-off between the two positions.

What a GP practice can reclaim for maternity cover

A partner going on maternity leave is a financial event for the practice as well as for her, and this is where maternity becomes a practice-accounts question. Section 9 of the GMS Statement of Financial Entitlements Directions 2026 reimburses practices for covering a GP performer on ordinary or additional maternity leave, paternity leave, neonatal care leave, ordinary or additional adoption leave or shared parental leave. Ordinary unpaid parental leave, the statutory entitlement to time off to look after a child, carries no cover payment under Section 9 at all.

Paragraph 9(5) sets the maximum at £1,526.80 per week for the first two weeks of reimbursed cover and £2,316.37 per week thereafter. Those figures were substituted by the GMS Statement of Financial Entitlements (Amendment) Directions 2026, in force 1 May 2026 with effect from 1 April 2026, which replaced the £1,475.17 and £2,238.03 originally printed in the principal Directions. Paragraph 9(6) then adds the two rules that decide what a practice actually banks.

The payment is "whichever is the lower of the invoiced costs or the maximum amount payable", which makes the locum's invoice the controlling document. The amounts are also not pro-rated to the absent performer's working pattern, so a practice covering a part-time partner's absence can still recover up to the full weekly cap. That second rule is a real and widely missed cash benefit.

The conditions at paragraph 9(3) are where claims fail, and there are four of them. The practice must have actually and necessarily engaged a locum, or used the services of a GP performer who is a party to the contract or who is already employed or engaged by the practice. Then: the leave of absence must run for more than one week; the performer on leave must be entitled to that leave under statute, under a partnership agreement, or under a contract of employment that entitles them to be paid their full salary by the practice during the absence; any covering performer who is already a party to the contract or already employed or engaged must not be employed full time; and no other cover payment may be claimed under Part 4 for the same absent performer.

Claims are made after the costs are incurred, within 14 days of the end of the month in which they fell if no other frequency is agreed, with payment due 14 days later. Cover is therefore reimbursed in arrears, so there is a working-capital gap between paying the locum and being repaid.

Two things follow for the accounts. The 14-day claim habit is the difference between recovering the cost and absorbing it, and late claims are the common failure. Because reimbursement is capped, the rate agreed with the covering locum decides whether the practice breaks even.

These payments appear on the practice's monthly statement alongside everything else, and reconciling them is covered in the PCSE statement reconciliation guide. Payroll obligations for employed staff taking maternity leave sit separately, on the GP payroll services page.

What to do next, by status

If you are self-employed and thinking about a pregnancy, you have one job before anything else. Check your National Insurance record for Class 2 weeks, and decide whether voluntary contributions at £3.65 a week are worth making. On a 39-week claim the arithmetic is not close.

If you are salaried, confirm the 12-month NHS service test at the 11th week, check whether a salary sacrifice is running through the earnings-assessment weeks, and leave your pension alone. If you are a partner in a practice with a colleague going on leave, agree the cover rate against the SFE cap and diarise the monthly claim.

Where a decision turns on figures, general guidance is no substitute for a calculation on your own numbers. Our team works with GP partners, salaried GPs, locums and practices on exactly these positions. The rates above are for 2026/27 and carry the date they were read at source; confirm your entitlement with the Department for Work and Pensions or your employer before you rely on it.