Shared parental leave: maximum weeks

The most shared parental leave a couple can have, reached only if the mother takes nothing beyond the two weeks she cannot refuse.

50weeks

Derivation verified Derived Great Britain in force since 2015-04-05

Checked against its sources: statute verified 2026-09-21

Scope: A MAXIMUM in the strictest sense, reached only when the mother takes nothing beyond the two weeks she cannot refuse. Every week of maternity leave she takes beyond them comes off this number, and regulation 6(4) and (5) then subtract what the other parent has notified — so the figure a particular couple has is per-case and is not published. The gross limb is Shared parental leave: total weeks before deduction and the subtrahend is Compulsory maternity leave (weeks); this record is only their difference (D14), and the build refuses a build in which the three disagree. The parallel adoption calculation is regulation 22, a different provision with no compulsory period to subtract.

How it is worked out: Shared parental leave: total weeks before deduction − Compulsory maternity leave (weeks) — recomputed from its corroborated inputs on every build.

Current sources

Source A · Legislationhttps://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2014/3050/made (Shared Parental Leave Regulations 2014 reg 6(1): "the total amount of shared parental leave available to M and P in relation to C is 52 weeks less" the weeks of statutory maternity leave taken — the gross limb of this derivation)

retrieved 2026-09-08

Source A · Legislationhttps://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1999/3312/made (Maternity and Parental Leave etc. Regulations 1999 reg 8: the compulsory maternity leave period is "the period of two weeks which commences with the day on which childbirth occurs" — the subtrahend limb, and the least a mother can take)

retrieved 2026-09-11

History

Value	From	To	Status	Sources
50	2015-04-05	—	Derivation verified	Legislation: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2014/3050/made (Shared Parental Leave Regulations 2014 reg 6(1): "the total amount of shared parental leave available to M and P in relation to C is 52 weeks less" the weeks of statutory maternity leave taken — the gross limb of this derivation) retrieved 2026-09-08 Legislation: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1999/3312/made (Maternity and Parental Leave etc. Regulations 1999 reg 8: the compulsory maternity leave period is "the period of two weeks which commences with the day on which childbirth occurs" — the subtrahend limb, and the least a mother can take) 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.spl.max_weeks
Record fields (source type · unit · jurisdiction · status): derived·weeks·GB·derivation_verified
Derivation: employment.leave.spl.total_weeks@numeric - employment.leave.compulsory_maternity_weeks@numeric
Record hash (canonical JSON, SHA-256): sha256:51e1d19c3c67eb89f0564722b5d242f54a814ec5de5adea6ba0d5450cf192069
Source snapshots (SHA-256): Legislation: sha256:18a53f4c6af3a2150dfd57588fedc0680f967216f003a458391b47aa6f6f8157; Legislation: sha256:3487776b83ad7f393327bb710863224f075f6c34ba2a7d4917f1f331fd5f113d
Listed in the signed manifest: release 3.0.0 manifest · record_hashes["employment.leave.spl.max_weeks"]
Machine-readable record: /v1/figures/employment.leave.spl.max_weeks · current only: /v1/figures/employment.leave.spl.max_weeks/current

Compiler's notes

Not a figure any document states, which is the whole reason it is a derivation — D-D14-5 named this exact shape and deferred it until the subtrahend had carry evidence, which it got this morning when the relay parked the 1999 Regulations' as-made text. GOV.UK prints 50 weeks; the Regulations print 52 less a variable, and the difference between those two sentences is what this record exists to hold. Dated from the gross limb rather than from the subtrahend, because the subtraction could not be made before regulation 6 applied at all. Both limbs are cited as legislation: the pages that state 50 state it as guidance about a maximum, not as the enacted figure.