Shared Parental Pay (ShPP) Quick Calculator

Shared Parental Pay (ShPP) allows eligible parents to share up to 37 weeks of statutory pay between them after the birth or adoption of a child. Nothing happens automatically: the mother must first curtail her maternity leave and pay, which is what creates the shared entitlement in the first place. ShPP is then paid at £194.32 per week or 90% of average weekly earnings, whichever is lower, for 2026/27. Each parent's rate comes from their own earnings, so anyone averaging less than about £216 a week gets 90% of their own average, and below £129 a week there is no ShPP at all.

The total shared entitlement is worked out by subtracting the weeks of maternity pay already taken from 39 weeks. If the mother takes 10 weeks of maternity pay, 29 weeks of ShPP remain to be split, and 10 plus 29 still makes 39 paid weeks. The mother must take the first 2 weeks after the birth as maternity leave, which is why ShPP tops out at 37 weeks and shared leave at 50. What converting can cost is rate rather than time: SMP pays 90% of earnings with no cap for the first 6 weeks, so ending it before week 7 swaps those weeks for ShPP at no more than £194.32.

Both parents have to clear an eligibility test, but the tests differ. The parent taking ShPP needs 26 weeks of continuous employment with the same employer by the end of the 15th week before the due week, and average earnings of at least £129 a week. The other parent only has to pass the employment and earnings test: working, employed or self-employed, in at least 26 of the 66 weeks before the due week and earning at least £390 in total in any 13 of those weeks. Failing either test stops the claim, so it is the first thing to check.

This calculator works out one parent's ShPP, showing paid and unpaid weeks, so run it once for each of you to compare sharing scenarios. In practice the leave can be taken as a single continuous block, as up to 3 separate blocks per parent, or concurrently with both of you at home for some or all of it. Employers need 8 weeks' notice before each block. The paperwork runs in two stages: a Notice of Entitlement and Intention to Take, followed by a formal Period of Leave Notice 8 weeks before each block actually starts.

Four patterns cover most families. The mother takes 6-9 months and the father takes the remaining 3-6 months on his own, which works well when she wants to return to work first. Parents alternate blocks of 2-3 weeks, which suits jobs that cannot absorb a long absence. The father takes months 6-12 because the mother's enhanced maternity pay is usually concentrated in the early weeks. Or both take concurrent leave for the first 2-4 weeks, trading total months at home for an intense period together at the start.

That enhanced pay is what usually decides it. Many UK employers pay enhanced maternity pay at full pay for anywhere between 8 and 26 weeks, but only the statutory £194.32 a week for shared parental leave, so a father converting maternity pay into ShPP is often trading a well-paid week for a poorly paid one. It tends to be worth doing where the financial hit is bearable, where both parents genuinely want the extended time, or where a long absence would put the mother's own job at risk.