TemporMaternity pay records: what you must keep, and for how long
A site manager tells payroll that Aneta is going on maternity leave in March, payroll works out the money, and everyone moves on. The pay is usually right. The record behind it usually is not, because unlike sick pay this one is still prescribed in law: three named items, a three-year clock that starts later than you think, and one document the regulation tells you not to keep.
It is a short regulation. Worth fifteen minutes before the next one comes up.
Where the duty comes from, and why it is unusually specific
Most statutory pay record duties are vague by design. Keep what you need to show your working, keep it for a few years, and that is the end of it.
Maternity pay is not like that. Regulation 26 of the Statutory Maternity Pay (General) Regulations 1986 names the retention period, names the three things the record has to show, and names one document you are told not to hold at all. It is short enough to read in two minutes and it is written in the imperative.
The contrast with sick pay is worth drawing, because the two sit next to each other in most people's heads. The dedicated SSP record requirement was revoked in April 2014, leaving general PAYE rules and HMRC's power to ask. Nothing of the kind happened to maternity. The 1986 regulation is still there, still prescriptive, and still the thing an HMRC compliance check will be measured against.
Three years, counted from an awkward place
The period is three years after the end of the tax year in which the maternity pay period ended.
Read that twice, because every part of it moves the date later than people expect. Not three years from the last payment. Not three years from her return. Three years from the end of the tax year the maternity pay period finished in.
A maternity pay period that ends in May 2026 sits inside the 2026/27 tax year, which closes on 5 April 2027. Add three years and the file is live until April 2030, which is getting on for four years from the last payslip. Purge on the anniversary of the payment and you will destroy records that were still required.
What the record actually has to show
Three items, and the third is the one people miss.
The date of the first day of absence from work wholly or partly because of pregnancy or confinement, as notified by her. Note the wording: wholly or partly. A day she went home at two o'clock because of the pregnancy counts, and it is exactly the kind of day that never reaches a written record on a busy site.
The weeks in that tax year in which SMP was paid, and the amount paid in each week. Weeks, not months, which matters if your payroll runs monthly and somebody has to unpick a month into its constituent weeks later.
Any week inside the maternity pay period for which no SMP was paid, and the reason. This is the interesting one. The duty is not to record what you paid. It is to record what you did not pay and why. A week where she did some work for you, a week she was abroad, a week taken in keeping-in-touch arrangements, a week where the money stopped for a reason that made sense at the time. Absence of a payment is a thing you have to explain, and nine months later nobody remembers.
The two document rules
Medical evidence, the MATB1 certificate, is kept for the same three years. If you have handed the original back to her, which is reasonable because she may need it, a copy satisfies the regulation.
The birth certificate is the opposite. An employer must not retain it. You keep a record of the date of birth and nothing more.
That is a one-line rule and it is broken constantly, usually by a process that scans anything an employee hands over into a personnel folder. Worth a look at how yours works, because it is also the sort of thing that reads badly in a data protection complaint: holding a child's birth certificate you were expressly told not to keep is difficult to justify as necessary.
The eight weeks that decide the money
Here is the part that connects the paperwork to what actually happens on a site.
Entitlement runs off section 164 of the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992. She needs 26 weeks' continuous employment with you, ending with the week before the fourteenth week before the expected week of confinement, and her normal weekly earnings over the eight weeks ending with the qualifying week must be at least the lower earnings limit, which is £129 a week for 2026/27.
That eight-week window is fixed in the past and it is not negotiable. It ends with the qualifying week, the fifteenth week before the baby is due, which in practice means the earnings that decide her pay were earned before anybody in the office knew there was a calculation coming.
For salaried staff this is arithmetic and nobody thinks about it. For anyone paid by the hour it is a question about your records, asked retrospectively, about a period you had no reason to pay special attention to at the time. If those eight weeks are sitting in a WhatsApp thread and a foreman's memory, the average weekly earnings figure is a reconstruction, and a reconstruction is what a dispute is made of.
The 2026/27 numbers
SMP runs for up to 39 weeks: 90% of average weekly earnings for the first six, then £194.32 or 90% of average weekly earnings, whichever is lower, for the remaining 33.
Two details on that figure are worth having.
The first is the date. The SMP rate applies from 5 April 2026, while almost every other statutory rate in the same table applies from 6 April. One day out, on one line, in a table of about forty.
The second is last year's figure. £187.18 was the 2025/26 rate. Carry it over by mistake and the payment is seven pounds light, every week, for thirty-three weeks. The rates and thresholds guidance for 2026 to 2027 and the employer guide at gov.uk/employers-maternity-pay-leave both give £194.32.
| 2026/27 | |
|---|---|
| First 6 weeks | 90% of average weekly earnings |
| Remaining 33 weeks | £194.32 or 90% of AWE, whichever is lower |
| Rate applies from | 5 April 2026 |
| Lower earnings limit | £129 a week |
| Recovery, NI above £45,000 | 92% |
| Recovery, NI £45,000 or lower | 109% |
| Keep records for | 3 years after the end of the tax year the pay period ended |
What you get back
Unlike sick pay, this is recoverable. For 2026/27 you reclaim 92% of what you paid if your total Class 1 National Insurance for the previous tax year was above £45,000, and 109% if it was £45,000 or lower, which is Small Employers' Relief doing its job.
The extra nine per cent is not a bonus. It is there to cover the employer National Insurance on the payment itself, which is why the threshold is drawn on your NI bill rather than your headcount or turnover.
Either way, you can only reclaim what you can evidence, which brings it back to the record.
Where it goes wrong on a site with irregular hours
Four habits, all of them understandable.
The first day of absence is recorded as the day she went on leave. It is often earlier, because the regulation counts absence wholly or partly caused by the pregnancy, and the afternoon she went home in week 30 is part of the story.
Nobody records the reason a week was unpaid. The payment stops, everyone knows why at the time, and the reason is never written down. The regulation asks for it by name.
The eight-week window is reconstructed after the fact. Averages get built from a payroll summary that rounded, or from hours that were logged a fortnight late and rounded again. Two small errors in the same direction and the weekly figure is wrong for the better part of a year.
The file gets cleared too early. Three years from the payment is not the rule. Three years from the end of the tax year the pay period ended in is the rule, and people who set a reminder usually set it on the wrong date.
None of this is anybody behaving badly. It is a duty written in 1986 landing on a business that keeps its hours in a group chat.
Related guides
- Statutory Sick Pay in 2026: What You Actually Have to Record
- Auto-enrolment: the records you have to keep, and for how long
- Unpaid parental leave: 18 weeks per child, from day one, and the count you'll need to keep
- Neonatal care leave: counting the weeks, and the three-year pay record
Common questions
How long do I have to keep statutory maternity pay records?
Three years after the end of the tax year in which the maternity pay period ended. That is regulation 26 of the Statutory Maternity Pay (General) Regulations 1986. Note where the clock starts: not the day she went on leave, not the day she came back, but the end of the tax year the pay period finished in, which can push the real retention date close to four years.
What exactly has to be in the record?
Three things. The date of the first day of absence from work wholly or partly because of pregnancy or confinement, as she notified it to you. The weeks in that tax year in which SMP was paid and the amount paid in each week. And any week in that tax year that fell inside her maternity pay period but carried no payment, together with the reason none was made.
Do I keep the MATB1 maternity certificate?
Yes, for the same three years. The regulation lets you keep a copy if you have returned the original to her, which is the sensible arrangement since she may need it elsewhere. Keep the copy legible and with the rest of the file rather than in a drawer nobody can find.
Can I keep a copy of the birth certificate?
No. The regulation says an employer must not retain a birth certificate. You keep a record of the date of birth instead. It is a small rule and it is the one most likely to be broken by a well-meaning HR folder that scans everything that arrives.
What is the SMP rate for 2026/27?
Ninety per cent of her average weekly earnings for the first six weeks, then £194.32 or 90% of average weekly earnings, whichever is lower, for the remaining 33 weeks. The £194.32 figure applies from 5 April 2026 rather than 6 April, which is one of the few statutory rates that moves on a different day from the rest.
Which eight weeks set the average weekly earnings?
The eight weeks ending with the qualifying week, which is the fifteenth week before the week the baby is due. For anyone on salary that is arithmetic. For anyone paid by the hour it depends entirely on whether the hours in that window were recorded properly at the time, because you cannot reconstruct them nine months later from memory.
How much of it can I claim back?
For 2026/27, 92% if your total Class 1 National Insurance for the previous tax year was above £45,000, and 109% if it was £45,000 or lower under Small Employers' Relief. Statutory Sick Pay cannot be recovered at all, which is a difference worth knowing if you are budgeting for both.
Does Temporra work out maternity pay?
No. It is not payroll software and it does not calculate any statutory payment. What it holds is the hours behind the calculation: who worked, when, on which job, timestamped at the point it happened rather than written up later.
Where hours fit in
Temporra records the hours people actually worked: clock-in and clock-out, against a job and a site, with a face check at the point of clocking in so a colleague cannot do it for somebody who is not there. That check is a descriptor match against a stored photo rather than a liveness test, so treat it as one control against buddy punching and not as proof of identity.
It does not run payroll, it does not calculate statutory maternity pay, and it does not build your rota. What it holds is the number underneath the calculation: hours per person, per week, timestamped when they happened. The eight weeks that set somebody's maternity pay are always eight weeks in the past, and the only way to have them is to have been recording them before anyone asked.
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