Ordinary maternity leave (weeks)

The first half of statutory maternity leave, starting on the date notified or on the birth itself if that comes sooner.

26weeks

Corroborated Statutory Instrument Great Britain in force since 2003-04-06

Checked against its sources: statute verified 2026-09-11·guidance verified 2026-09-21

Scope: 26 weeks, and it is the FIRST half of statutory maternity leave, not the whole of it: the second half is Additional maternity leave (weeks), also 26 weeks, and the 52-week total is the derived Maternity leave: total weeks. Maternity PAY runs 39 weeks (Statutory Maternity Pay: weeks payable), so pay outlasts this period and stops part-way through the additional one. The first two weeks after childbirth inside it are compulsory and cannot be waived (Compulsory maternity leave (weeks)). Regulation 7(2) can make the period longer where a statutory prohibition on working outlasts it, and regulation 7(5) ends it early on dismissal, so 26 is the ordinary length rather than an invariable one.

Current sources

Source A · Legislationhttps://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2002/2789/made (SI 2002/2789 reg 8(a): "In regulation 7 (duration of maternity leave periods)- (a) in paragraph (1), for “eighteen weeks” substitute “26 weeks”"; in force 24 November 2002, reg 1(1), having effect only in relation to employees whose expected week of childbirth begins on or after 6 April 2003, reg 2(1))

retrieved 2026-09-11

Source B · Official guidancehttps://www.gov.uk/maternity-pay-leave (under "Leave": "Statutory Maternity Leave is 52 weeks. It's made up of: Ordinary Maternity Leave - first 26 weeks Additional Maternity Leave - last 26 weeks")

retrieved 2026-07-29

History

Value	From	To	Status	Sources
26	2003-04-06	—	Corroborated	Legislation: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2002/2789/made (SI 2002/2789 reg 8(a): "In regulation 7 (duration of maternity leave periods)- (a) in paragraph (1), for “eighteen weeks” substitute “26 weeks”"; in force 24 November 2002, reg 1(1), having effect only in relation to employees whose expected week of childbirth begins on or after 6 April 2003, reg 2(1)) retrieved 2026-09-11 Official guidance: https://www.gov.uk/maternity-pay-leave (under "Leave": "Statutory Maternity Leave is 52 weeks. It's made up of: Ordinary Maternity Leave - first 26 weeks Additional Maternity Leave - last 26 weeks") retrieved 2026-07-29
18	2000-04-30	2003-04-05	Primary source only	Legislation: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1999/3312/made (SI 1999/3312 reg 7(1) as made: "Subject to paragraphs (2) and (5), an employee's ordinary maternity leave period continues for the period of eighteen weeks from its commencement, or until the end of the compulsory maternity leave period provided for in regulation 8 if later"; in force 15 December 1999, reg 1, Part II — which contains regulation 7 — having effect only for employees whose expected week of childbirth begins on or after 30 April 2000, reg 3(1)) retrieved 2026-09-11

Receipt

Everything above is reproducible and independently checkable — no trust in this site required (how verification works).

Figure ID: employment.leave.maternity.ordinary_weeks
Name in the API: Ordinary maternity leave: weeks
Record fields (source type · unit · jurisdiction · status): si·weeks·GB·corroborated
Record hash (canonical JSON, SHA-256): sha256:7c994a1b871a8091211987fbc75a6eb6ba4cffe1d8acce8f69106126cea834cd
Source snapshots (SHA-256): Legislation: sha256:211d87df6ee78afdb038435f33962f786cd8b9c57a067b5584ad6183f2e46c63; Official guidance: sha256:728dd9d923c0cc64dd79373a78cec6e2886c91437c3e1325de31dc123cbf49fd
Listed in the signed manifest: release 3.0.0 manifest · record_hashes["employment.leave.maternity.ordinary_weeks"]
Machine-readable record: /v1/figures/employment.leave.maternity.ordinary_weeks · current only: /v1/figures/employment.leave.maternity.ordinary_weeks/current

Compiler's notes

A derivation, not a carry, and deliberately so: the carry route is the one that fails here. SI 2002/2789 reg 8(a) wrote only the words "26 weeks" into paragraph (1), and locate reports those two words satisfied by three sibling provisions of the host (regulation-7-1, regulation-7-4, regulation-18-1-b), so no single token set can be both unique in the host and present in the setter — which is why this row was refused on 2026-09-11 and its sibling shipped alone. A derivation needs no host locator: it reads the amending instrument's own substituted words. What it needed was Amendment.is_count widened to read an integer written as a number word and followed by its unit noun, because _COUNT's bare digits matched neither "eighteen weeks" nor "26 weeks" (D18 follow-up, 2026-09-14). The eighteen weeks it replaced are attested by the instrument's own for-text and dated from the 1999 Regulations' as-made bytes.