NHS Maternity Pay - Please Help

[HappyMondayKidz]

Hello

I'm on a band 5 salary - bottom increment at £24,214. Been working for the NHS for just under 10 years, so I'm entitled to 29 days annual leave as well.

After tax, NI and pension etc, I take home about £1550 (not including any expenses accrued during that month).

Has anyone with the same salary within the NHS taken maternity and how much did you get? I can't really work it out - I think I'd like to take the full 12 months but have my pay split up over 12 months.

I just want to make sure we can afford to do it! :)

Any help much appreciated!

P.S. I know that us NHS workers are very lucky when it comes to mat leave, and I am grateful for whatever we get. I just want to see roughly how much I should expect to see if we can afford it with out outgoings! So please no hating on me :)

Sorry to jump on two months late but did anyone manage to work this out? Thanks!

We have now created a calculator specifically for the NHS scheme:
maternity.money/nhs-maternity-pay-calculator

You can choose to spread your maternity pay equally over 12 months.

In terms of whether spreading your maternity pay is a good thing - we did some analysis and you will generally end up better off spreading, so long as you don't cut your leave short:

Maternity Money - Spreading Maternity Pay

I hope that's helpful

@MaternityMoney thanks the calculator is really helpful. Is there an option that could be added that calculator to incorporate if you have a salary sacrifice. Many nhs staff have salary sacrifice cars etc
Thanks

I also had a huge confusion over mat pay on nhs. I'm band 2 but obvs we get the same scheme.

My HR is bloody useless though. I asked them how much and they just directed me to the policy so I could figure it out myself with no order explanation other than copy and paste.

And then I asked about shared parental leave... Lol. They had no bloody clue. I have had to tell them.

I'm frustrated that with the nhs spl policy, if we want to use it in the first 26 weeks where you get the extra pay, you'd lose it and just get smp. Or that's what I understood after emailing hr again. And because my partner's spl policy is very different and specifically gives him extra pay not just smp during spl.

We don't support salary sacrifice at present as the calculations on what benefit in kind payments need to be made are pretty complicated and specific to the exact scheme you have (for example the benefit in kind payments for cars depend on the CO2 emmissions of your car).

If you know what your monthly deductions for salary sacrifice are, and you know how much of your salary you have sacrificed then you could adjust the salary you input into the calculator to account for this... sorry not ideal I know.

We will get to it, but we have a few other things that we are working on first.