Maternity pay question (uk)

You would get the equivalent of what you normally work, essentially pay for the 3 days a week

But if I up my hours to full time now, so from 3 days to 5. I’m mega early baby not due til October. Would I get full time enhanced pay?

I’m not 100% but from this it looks like they select ‘the relevant period’ and base your calculations on that. The qualifying week is 15 weeks before baby is due and the relevant period they use to calculate how much you’d be entitled to is the 8 weeks prior to that. Would that work out as whatever you were earning between 17-25 weeks pregnant is what they’d base it on? Really not certain on this but I’d say the sooner you up your hours the better! https://www.gov.uk/guidance/statutory-maternity-pay-manually-calculate-your-employees-payments

You would get it pro rated. However, they use a certain period of time to calculate how much to give you so if you were working full time during those weeks you'd likely qualify for the full amount. However, be careful as your company may not let you do this because it's quite clear you're trying to get more money from them. It'd also involve a change in your contract so if you came back from maternity leave you'd be expected to come back for full time hours unless you made a flexible working request which they then accepted. So quite a few risks there! For me personally I work 4 days and got the enhanced pay on that basis because I didn't want to risk them turning down a flexible working request on my return. Or for them to think I'm being super cheeky and taking the piss (which it kind of would be) to just go up to full time for a while only to get the extra money while on maternity leave.

As long as you are working 5 days a week by the time you are 17 weeks pregnant then you should get maternity pay based on that.

It will literally depend on your company’s policy and unfortunately you’ll have to speak to your line manager/HR department about it, a supportive company will honour it, a large corp might not due to precedent, a small business due to finances…fingers crossed for you x

Thanks all. I suppose I’ll just have to wait and see. I don’t have a choice about going back full time, it’s not just for the maternity pay, I need to go back to save for this baby because life atm is horrendously expensive

Maternity pay is based on what you earn between week 15-26 of pregnancy. So whatever wage you’re on then will be how your maternity pay is worked out