Figures › Maternity, paternity, adoption and other family pay

Statutory Paternity Pay: weeks payable

How many weeks of Statutory Paternity Pay a new parent can take.

2weeks

Corroborated Act of Parliament Great Britain in force since 2002-12-08

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

Scope: s.171ZE(2)(b) lets regulations permit the same two weeks to be taken as a single week, or as two NON-consecutive single weeks. The entitlement is two weeks either way; only its shape differs.

Current sources

Source A · LegislationSocial Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992, c. 4 s. 171ZE(2)(a) ("a period of two consecutive weeks within the qualifying period")

retrieved 2026-07-29

Source B · Official guidancehttps://www.gov.uk/paternity-pay-leave ("You can take up to 2 weeks' leave")

retrieved 2026-07-29

History

Value	From	To	Status	Sources
2	2002-12-08	—	Corroborated	Legislation: Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992, c. 4 s. 171ZE(2)(a) ("a period of two consecutive weeks within the qualifying period") retrieved 2026-07-29 Official guidance: https://www.gov.uk/paternity-pay-leave ("You can take up to 2 weeks' leave") retrieved 2026-07-29

Receipt

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

Figure ID: employment.spp.weeks
Name in the API: Statutory Paternity Pay: weeks
Record fields (source type · unit · jurisdiction · status): act·weeks·GB·corroborated
Record hash (canonical JSON, SHA-256): sha256:e80c2a6343cb7b3291210cc76365d292586c6b5ca67bdbd13cea35508ea62b9d
Source snapshots (SHA-256): Legislation: sha256:6023361d0684c1796322cea2486e9d81f7ef04a32792ed59c72d7a7c0bac160a; Official guidance: sha256:a22b093e1c2accb654198892dea38848dd7eb3cf02d82b0199baaa4898a8b015
Listed in the signed manifest: release 3.0.0 manifest · record_hashes["employment.spp.weeks"]
Machine-readable record: /v1/figures/employment.spp.weeks · current only: /v1/figures/employment.spp.weeks/current

Compiler's notes

A count, located by an authored LOCATORS phrase read from s.171ZE(2)(a); the GOV.UK sentence is registered in B_EVIDENCE for the nightly. effective_from is the commencement of the Part that states it, read from the F-note on the archived section: "Pt. 12ZA inserted (8.12.2002) by Employment Act 2002 (c. 22), ss. 2, 55(2); S.I. 2002/2866, art. 2(2), Sch. 1 Pt. 2" — the insertion wrapper that holds paragraph (a) is that note's own. The 5.4.2015 repeal in s.171ZE(2) took a word from the subsection's opening line, not from the paragraph, and the probe reports it as touching other words.