Maternity Leave and Holiday Entitlement UK 2026

The right to accrue holiday during maternity leave is established by the interaction of three sets of regulations. The Maternity and Parental Leave etc. Regulations 1999 preserve the contract of employment during maternity leave. The Working Time Regulations 1998 give the right to 5.6 weeks of paid leave per leave year. The Working Time (Amendment) Regulations 2023 codify the carry-over rule for family leave.

Because the contract of employment continues during maternity leave, the worker continues to accrue all contractual benefits that accrue with time worked, including annual leave. The employer cannot lawfully reduce or pause holiday accrual during the 52-week maternity leave period. This applies to the 26 weeks of Ordinary Maternity Leave and the further 26 weeks of Additional Maternity Leave equally.

Bonus and other discretionary payments may be paid pro-rata for the maternity period, but annual leave is not discretionary; it is a non-pro-rated statutory and contractual right that continues to accrue. GOV.UK maternity leave guidance confirms the holiday accrual rule.

Holiday cannot be taken on the same days as maternity leave; they are mutually exclusive categories of leave. But holiday can be used immediately before maternity leave starts, or immediately after maternity leave ends. Many employees use one of two strategies. The first is to take a week or two of accrued holiday at full pay before the maternity leave formally begins, delaying the moment when pay drops to the statutory rate. The second is to take several weeks of accrued holiday at the end of maternity leave, extending the time at home with the baby on full pay rather than returning early.

The accrued holiday extension at the end is the more common pattern because by month 9 of maternity the parent has often accrued 22 days of leave (their full annual entitlement of 28 days less roughly 6 days they used in the previous leave year before going off). At 5 days per week, 22 days of leave extends the time off by roughly 4 weeks and 2 days. With the employer's agreement, the worker can also use carried-over leave to extend further.

The employee should give notice of the holiday request in the normal way (typically twice the length of the leave requested) and confirm in writing with the employer. The employer can refuse a specific date on operational grounds but cannot refuse the right to take accrued leave at all. ACAS guidance on family leave covers the practical mechanics of the request.

Most maternity leave periods cross the boundary of a leave year, which creates a carry-over problem. A worker whose leave year runs January to December and who goes on maternity leave in September has accrued 21 days of leave by December and will accrue another 28 days during January-September of the next year. The total accrued at return is 49 days, far more than can be taken in the remaining months of the second leave year.

The rule from Regulation 13(9) of the WTR 1998 (as amended in 2023) is that all leave accrued during statutory family leave must be allowed to be taken in a subsequent leave year. There is no fixed limit on the carry-over period; the worker has until the leave year following the family leave to use it, and can request to use it across the rest of the current leave year too. The employer must accommodate reasonable requests to take the carried-over leave.

For practical payroll purposes, most employers simply add the accrued maternity leave to the worker's balance at the start of the next leave year. A worker returning in October with 49 days carried over will have a leave balance of 49 days plus any new accrual in the new leave year. The expectation is that the balance is run down during the year through ordinary leave-taking, supplemented if needed by an agreement to spread it over more than one leave year.

The amount paid for holiday taken on either side of maternity leave is the worker's normal pay (basic plus regular commission, regular overtime, regular shift premia), not Statutory Maternity Pay. The worker who uses two weeks of holiday before maternity leave starts is paid at the normal £52k salary daily rate, not the £187.18 statutory weekly rate. The same applies to holiday at the end of maternity leave.

For irregular-hours workers (post 1 April 2024), the calculation of a week's holiday pay uses the 52-week reference period. The maternity leave weeks themselves are not counted (because no normal weekly pay was received during them), so the reference period extends further back to find 52 weeks of paid work. The maximum lookback is 104 weeks, which covers two full years.

Statutory Maternity Pay itself is paid by the employer and reclaimed from HMRC. The current rate (2025/26) is £187.18 per week or 90% of average weekly earnings (whichever is lower) for weeks 7 to 39. The first 6 weeks are paid at 90% of average weekly earnings with no cap. Weeks 40 to 52 (Additional Maternity Leave) are unpaid unless the employer offers contractual maternity pay above the statutory minimum. GOV.UK maternity pay guidance confirms the current rates.

The same accrual and carry-over rules apply to all statutory family leave types. Paternity leave is up to 2 weeks taken within the first 52 weeks of the child's birth or placement, with full holiday accrual during the period. Adoption leave runs for up to 52 weeks on the same pattern as maternity leave, with full accrual throughout. Shared parental leave allows the parents to share up to 50 weeks between them in blocks, with full accrual during each block.

The Paternity Leave Regulations were updated in April 2024 to allow paternity leave to be taken in two separate one-week blocks instead of only as a single two-week block. The change increases flexibility but does not affect holiday accrual: full accrual applies during each block. GOV.UK paternity leave guidance sets out the post-April-2024 rules.

Bereavement leave (introduced for parents who lose a child under 18 or suffer a stillbirth after 24 weeks of pregnancy, established by the Parental Bereavement (Leave and Pay) Act 2018) also preserves holiday accrual during the 2 weeks of statutory leave. The accrual rate is the worker's normal contractual rate, and the leave can be carried over if it cannot be taken in the same leave year.