Family leave
Keeping in touch days: working during maternity leave without losing pay
A day of training, a team meeting or a handover in the middle of your leave: the rules that keep your SMP and your leave intact, and the one that costs a week’s pay.
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Keeping in touch (KIT) days let an employee on maternity or adoption leave do up to 10 days of work for her employer without ending the leave or losing Statutory Maternity or Adoption Pay. They are optional on both sides: the employer cannot require them and the employee cannot insist on them. Any work on a day counts as a whole KIT day, even a one-hour meeting or a training session, and none can be worked in the 2 weeks after the birth. Pay for the day is whatever the two of you agree; the employer may count SMP towards it, but the total for that pay week must not fall below the SMP due. Working on any day beyond the 10 costs the SMP for the whole pay week in which it falls. Parents on shared parental leave have a separate allowance of 20 SPLIT days each. The same 10-day rule applies in Northern Ireland and to Maternity Allowance.
A week with Keeping in Touch days
Week’s pay if KIT days are paid on top of SMP
£434.32
| SMP for the week (after week 6) | £194.32 |
| 2 KIT day(s) at your normal daily pay | £240.00 |
| If the employer offsets SMP against KIT pay | £240.00 |
Up to 10 KIT days in the whole maternity pay period; a working day beyond them costs that week’s SMP.
The legal rule in five points
KIT days come from regulation 12A of the Maternity and Parental Leave etc. Regulations 1999 for the leave, and from the SMP rules described in HMRC’s Statutory Payments Manual, SPM200100 for the pay.
- Up to 10 days in the whole leave, taken singly or in blocks, at any point except the 2 weeks after the birth (4 weeks for factory workers, whose compulsory leave is longer).
- Any work on a day is a day. A shift that crosses midnight counts as one KIT day only if that is your normal working pattern.
- Work includes training and activities whose purpose is to keep in touch with the workplace, such as a team day or an away-day.
- Reasonable contact is not work. Calls or emails about your return, a reorganisation or job vacancies do not use up KIT days or end your leave.
- The leave does not get longer. KIT days are inside the 52 weeks.
How the day is paid
The law sets no rate for a KIT day: nidirect says you and your employer agree the work and the pay in advance. In practice there are two ways an employer can handle it, and the difference matters. Take an employee on £600 for a 5-day week, so £120 a day, who is in the flat-rate part of her SMP at £194.32 a week.
| KIT days in the pay week | Paid on top of SMP | SMP offset against the day’s pay |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | £314.32 | £194.32 |
| 2 | £434.32 | £240.00 |
| 3 | £554.32 | £360.00 |
HMRC permits the second method: wages for the KIT day can be set against the SMP due, as long as the total for the SMP week is at least the SMP entitlement. Under it, a single KIT day paid at £120 adds nothing, because the SMP is higher. Agree the method before the day, in writing if possible. During the first 6 weeks, when SMP is 90% of your average pay, an offset leaves you with even less extra.
Counting days by pay week
The 10-day limit is counted across the whole leave, but the penalty for exceeding it is applied by SMP pay week, and pay weeks start on the weekday your SMP started, not on Monday. With SMP from Wednesday 3 March 2027, every pay week runs Wednesday to Tuesday. Suppose the employee works these days:
| SMP week | Dates | Days worked | KIT days used so far | SMP for the week |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20 | 14 July 2027 to 20 July 2027 | 2 | 2 | £194.32 |
| 21 | 21 July 2027 to 27 July 2027 | 3 | 5 | £194.32 |
| 26 | 25 August 2027 to 31 August 2027 | 2 | 7 | £194.32 |
| 30 | 22 September 2027 to 28 September 2027 | 5 | 10 | Lost: day beyond the limit |
Day 4 of the block in week 30 is day 11 of work in the leave, so the SMP for that whole week, £194.32, is not payable, even though 3 of the 5 days were still KIT days. The earlier weeks are paid in full. Splitting a block of days so that it straddles two pay weeks does not help once the 10 are used: every later week with any work in it is lost.
SPLIT days, adoption and Maternity Allowance
Each parent taking shared parental leave can work up to 20 Shared Parental Leave in Touch (SPLIT) days, in addition to any KIT days used during maternity or adoption leave (GOV.UK, Shared Parental Leave and Pay). The same counting rule applies, but the penalty is harsher: working more than 20 SPLIT days brings the shared parental pay period to an end (HMRC, SPM200300). Adoption leave has the same 10 KIT days as maternity leave. A woman on Maternity Allowance can also work 10 KIT days without losing any allowance, but must report each one to the Maternity Allowance helpline.
In Northern Ireland the allowance is the same 10 days, again only by agreement, and nidirect lists work, training and team events as typical uses (nidirect, Entitlements during Statutory Maternity Leave). For the dates of your leave and pay weeks, use the maternity leave dates calculator.