Figures › Maternity, paternity, adoption and other family pay

Statutory Adoption Pay: weeks payable

How many weeks Statutory Adoption Pay is paid for.

39weeks

Corroborated Statutory Instrument Great Britain in force since 2006-10-01

Checked against its sources: statute verified 2026-09-08·guidance verified 2026-09-21

Scope: 39 weeks. Regulation 22 shortens the period in the cases it lists (the child's death, a disrupted placement, the adopter's return to work). The 52-week ceiling is the Act's; the length is the regulations'.

Current sources

Source A · Legislationhttps://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2006/2236/made (SI 2006/2236 reg 4: "In regulation 21 (adoption pay period), in paragraph (5), for “26” substitute “39”"; in force 1 October 2006, reg 1)

retrieved 2026-09-08

Source B · Official guidancehttps://www.gov.uk/adoption-pay-leave ("Statutory Adoption Pay is paid for up to 39 weeks")

retrieved 2026-07-29

History

Value	From	To	Status	Sources
39	2006-10-01	—	Corroborated	Legislation: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2006/2236/made (SI 2006/2236 reg 4: "In regulation 21 (adoption pay period), in paragraph (5), for “26” substitute “39”"; in force 1 October 2006, reg 1) retrieved 2026-09-08 Official guidance: https://www.gov.uk/adoption-pay-leave ("Statutory Adoption Pay is paid for up to 39 weeks") retrieved 2026-07-29
26	2002-12-08	2006-09-30	Primary source only	Legislation: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2002/2822/made (SI 2002/2822 reg 21(5) as made: "the duration of any adoption pay period shall be a continuous period of 26 weeks"; in force 8 December 2002, reg 1) retrieved 2026-09-08

Receipt

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

Figure ID: employment.sap.paid_weeks
Name in the API: Statutory Adoption Pay: adoption pay period (weeks)
Record fields (source type · unit · jurisdiction · status): si·weeks·GB·corroborated
Record hash (canonical JSON, SHA-256): sha256:de49c8c2507c3234379163d69c78c93757c67408c0cb41ec432011de1871bcf4
Source snapshots (SHA-256): Legislation: sha256:f04030db2d3ff482041b2754e17d9a0e2d803cb6521e7a90284588d98980c244; Official guidance: sha256:5400f6529dafaa67ce485437290490ada90097b68ab21b3cefc5b348ba3783e2
Listed in the signed manifest: release 3.0.0 manifest · record_hashes["employment.sap.paid_weeks"]
Machine-readable record: /v1/figures/employment.sap.paid_weeks · current only: /v1/figures/employment.sap.paid_weeks/current

Compiler's notes

Named from source by the instrument finder (WS6-INSTRUMENT-MAP.md, 2026-09-08): the current-view Regulations carry an F-note citing SI 2006/2236 reg 4, a bare-count substitution. Deriving it needed extract_values to admit counts alongside rates — the first count the build re-derives from an instrument rather than carrying from an Act.