Statutory Maternity Pay, Other Family Friendly Payments, & Statutory Sick Pay: Proposed New Rates Announced

The proposed new rates for Statutory Maternity Pay, Statutory Paternity Pay, Shared Parental Pay, Adoption Pay, Maternity Allowance, and Statutory Parental Bereavement Pay, were announced on the 22nd November 2023. Final confirmation as to what the rates will be is expected later this month. The new rates would come into force on Monday 8th April 2024 under the proposal. The proposal is that the maximum rate (i.e. the cap) for all of these family friendly payments would increase from £172.48 to £184.03 per week, which means that those eligible would be entitled to the smaller of £184.03 or 90 per cent of their average gross weekly earnings per week. The average gross weekly earnings required to qualify for all of the family friendly payments, except for Maternity Allowance, would remain at £123.00 or more. With respect to Maternity Allowance, where an employee earns less than £123.00 per week on average, but was employed for 26 of the 66 previous weeks earning at least £30 per week (averaged over any 13 week period during the said 66 weeks), then they would entitled to the same. It was also proposed at the same time that Statutory Sick Pay (SSP) would be increased from £109.40 to £116.75 per week on the same date.