Advice re varying monthly SMP payments - potentially underpaid

[HumHU3]

Hi,

I’ve been on maternity leave since April (6 weeks on 90% and then continuing on the reduced payments). It’s been a challenging time with health / pnd so I’ve only just been through my payslips and realised how much my pay has varied over the months (eg £736 for October, £920 September, £736 for August etc) - and I can’t understand why?

My work are difficult (the finance manager pushed back on paying me smp initially) so I want to have a good understanding before I query it with them. My main concern is that they’ve messed up calculations and have underpaid me. Is there anyone with experience in the matter who can advise? I’ve been trying to get through to the Pregnant then Screwed helpline but haven’t been successful yet.

Thanks

It depends how the weeks fall some months will be 4 payments others 5.

Thanks, I’ve had a look back and realised I was mixing in some incorrect payslips which confused the numbers - oops…!

There's a link here - https://www.gov.uk/maternity-paternity-calculator that you can use.

Ultimately though you get 90% of your average weekly earnings for the first 6 weeks, then £184.03 or 90% of your average weekly earnings (whichever is lower) for the next 33 weeks.

They use a specific pay period to determine what your average weekly earnings is.

I've used an example of baby being due 01/05/2024, you starting mat leave on 15/04/2024. It then asked when the last payday was on or before 20/01/2024 and when the last payday was on or before 06/11/2023.

It then asks what the total earnings are between those two pay dates (i've used £2,500 for the example).

This has come back with the SMP of £593 in April (because it's two weeks' SMP pay), £1,096 in May (whole month @ 90%), then £736 in June, £867 in July, etc, etc. The variable amounts each month are because of the numbers of weeks in each month.

Came on to echo what @LIZS said, every few months there is a five week month which will increase your allowance, there was also a slight increase in April to SMP