Maternity pay?

It depends upon how long you've worked for your employer before going on maternity leave. It also depends upon whether your employer offers more maternity pay during leave based upon your length of service with them. The best thing for you to do to start is to read your company's maternity leave/pay policy.

Assuming you work full time and you're eligible for SMP, you'd get 90% pay for 6 weeks, then £170ish a week for 33 weeks. That's all taxable income. Your company may also have an enhanced maternity policy where they add more to this but it's at their own discretion. My company offer a very good top up which is why I'm still there. If you're not eligible for SMP then chances are you'll be eligible for maternity allowance which is almost the same but a bit less (£170ish for 39 weeks). Again, taxable and maternity allowance counts as unearned income so would take down the award for any benefits you may receive, too. Child benefit is £24 a week. If you or your partner earn over 50k you have to pay some back. If either of you earn over 60k it's not worth claiming as you have to pay it all back. If your household income is low and you have less than 6k in savings then you may be entitled to universal credit but that's on a case by case basis.

@Caroline Hey! I think SMP is the same pay as Maternity Allowance.. I’ve been reading on the same thing on.

SMP has the 90% salary part for the first six weeks and MA doesn't. SMP also doesn't count against benefit entitlements in quite the same way. But yeah, they're very similar as it's the minimum mandated amount of maternity pay.