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      "© Crown and database right. Derived from content available under the Open Government Licence v3.0 from legislation.gov.uk.",
      "Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0."
    ],
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  "figure": {
    "id": "employment.smp.continuous_employment_weeks",
    "name": "Statutory Maternity Pay: continuous employment qualifier",
    "category": "employment",
    "jurisdiction": "GB",
    "unit": "weeks",
    "value_type": "count",
    "currency": null,
    "cadence": null,
    "source_type": "act",
    "act_probe": {
      "verdict": "ACT-HOLDS",
      "provision": "section-164-2-a",
      "probed": "2026-07-29",
      "source_url": "https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1992/4/section/164/data.xml",
      "content_hash": "sha256:cadc3e623aea3fb17a0271259d4b14f9c57c38484548611eb3cc5928e0a3b01e",
      "tokens": [
        "a continuous period of at least 26 weeks ending with the week immediately preceding the 14th week before the expected week of confinement"
      ],
      "commentaries_c": [
        "M_C_57febaab-22a9-41c2-a845-d3c4a418c329",
        "key-d7100f8bd1ea6395edb684f005e45e32"
      ],
      "expires": null
    },
    "values": [
      {
        "value": 26,
        "value_minor": null,
        "effective_from": "1992-07-01",
        "effective_to": null,
        "announcement_date": null,
        "enacted_date": null,
        "instrument_made": true,
        "terminal_kind": null,
        "status": "corroborated",
        "sources": [
          {
            "role": "legislation",
            "citation": "Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992, c. 4 s. 164 (\"a continuous period of at least 26 weeks ending with the week immediately preceding the 14th week before the expected week of confinement\")",
            "uri": "https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1992/4/section/164",
            "retrieved": "2026-07-29T15:04:49Z",
            "content_hash": "sha256:f27fa7ae557de08c22879ebbf6178bd761e3634c428bb6ae997c7bc31f2b7ce7"
          },
          {
            "role": "guidance",
            "citation": "https://www.gov.uk/maternity-pay-leave (\"have worked for your employer continuously for at least 26 weeks\")",
            "uri": "https://www.gov.uk/maternity-pay-leave",
            "retrieved": "2026-07-29T15:05:08Z",
            "content_hash": "sha256:728dd9d923c0cc64dd79373a78cec6e2886c91437c3e1325de31dc123cbf49fd"
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      }
    ],
    "derivation": null,
    "invariants": [],
    "lineage": [],
    "definitions": [
      {
        "from": null,
        "to": null,
        "text": "The qualifying period of continuous employment with the same employer that a person must complete to be entitled to Statutory Maternity Pay. Stated by this payment's OWN provision: the figure happens to be 26 weeks for every statutory payment today, but each is set separately and can move separately.",
        "instrument": "Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992 s.164"
      }
    ],
    "applicability": {
      "basis": "pay_period_start",
      "note": "Measured back from the qualifying week defined by s.164, not from the payment date or the tax year.",
      "article": "Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992 s.164(2)"
    },
    "scope_note": "s.164 also empowers regulations to treat a person as having completed the period in prescribed circumstances — broken service under successive contracts, for instance — so the count is the statutory floor rather than the whole test.",
    "notes": "Deliberately NOT one shared figure across the payments. The Act repeats the condition per payment and each provision carries its own regulation-making power, so a merged row would be one legal claim standing for five, and wrong for four of them the moment any one changed. No invariant couples them for the same reason. effective_from is the Act's own commencement, read from s.177(4) in the archived whole-Act current view: \"Except as provided in Schedule 4 to the Consequential Provisions Act, this Act shall come into force on 1st July 1992\". s.164(2)(a) is the consolidated original text: the one F-note on it — \"Words in s. 164(2)(a) repealed (24.11.2002) by Employment Act 2002 (c. 22), ss. 20(a), 55(2), Sch. 8(1)\" — removed words at the END of the paragraph, after the 26 weeks, and the probe reports it as touching other words rather than the value.",
    "record_version": 3
  },
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    "manifest": "https://statbook.co.uk/v1/releases/3.0.0/manifest.json",
    "record_url": "https://statbook.co.uk/v1/figures/employment.smp.continuous_employment_weeks.json",
    "sources": [
      {
        "role": "legislation",
        "citation": "Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992, c. 4 s. 164 (\"a continuous period of at least 26 weeks ending with the week immediately preceding the 14th week before the expected week of confinement\")",
        "uri": "https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1992/4/section/164",
        "retrieved": "2026-07-29T15:04:49Z",
        "content_hash": "sha256:f27fa7ae557de08c22879ebbf6178bd761e3634c428bb6ae997c7bc31f2b7ce7"
      },
      {
        "role": "guidance",
        "citation": "https://www.gov.uk/maternity-pay-leave (\"have worked for your employer continuously for at least 26 weeks\")",
        "uri": "https://www.gov.uk/maternity-pay-leave",
        "retrieved": "2026-07-29T15:05:08Z",
        "content_hash": "sha256:728dd9d923c0cc64dd79373a78cec6e2886c91437c3e1325de31dc123cbf49fd"
      }
    ],
    "verified": {
      "guidance": "2026-09-21T10:07:35Z",
      "legislation": "2026-09-21T10:07:35Z"
    },
    "last_verified": "2026-09-21T10:07:35Z"
  }
}