Agency dad or partner: paternity leave and pay explained

Your baby is coming and you work through an agency. The rules split in two, and the split decides everything: leave is for employees only, pay can reach agency workers too. Get the two tests straight and you will know exactly what to claim and who to chase.

Leave and pay are two different rights

This is the point most advice blurs. Leave is time off with the baby. Pay is money through payroll. They come from different laws and use different tests.

Statutory paternity leave is an employee-only right. Since 6 April 2026 it is a day-one right in Great Britain, which means no qualifying service for employees. Workers still get none of it. Most agency temps are workers on contracts for services, not employees, so the day-one change passed them by. Check your contract: if the agency or umbrella employs you under a contract of employment, you are an employee and the day-one right applies to you.

Statutory Paternity Pay (SPP) works differently. It goes to “employed earners”, people whose earnings carry Class 1 National Insurance. That can include agency workers paid through PAYE by the agency or an umbrella company. The pay tests were deliberately left alone in 2026. You still need 26 weeks with the same payer, plus the earnings floor.

So yes, the odd result is real. You can qualify for the pay while having no legal right to the time off. In practice the agency simply stops offering you shifts for those weeks. There is no statutory right to return to the same assignment.

Do you qualify? The three pay tests

You need all three. Fail one and SPP is zero. The tests run against whoever operates your PAYE, usually the agency or the umbrella company, not the warehouse, ward or site where you do the shifts.

The qualifying week is the 15th week, Sunday to Saturday, before the expected week of childbirth. Everything dates from it. Your 26 weeks are counted back from that week. Your 8-week earnings period ends with the last normal payday on or before its Saturday.

Continuity is where agency claims most often fail. Sequential short assignments with the same agency can count if you stayed continuously on the agency books. A clean break, a switch to a different agency or umbrella, or dropping off the books before the birth breaks it.

How much you get

SPP is the lower of £194.32 a week or 90% of your average weekly earnings, for up to two weeks. It is paid through payroll with tax and National Insurance taken off. You never repay it if you do not go back.

You can take the two weeks as one block or as two separate one-week blocks, at any point in the 52 weeks after the birth. Split blocks have been allowed since April 2024. Employees take them as statutory leave. As an agency worker without leave rights you take them as unpaid weeks away from assignments, with SPP coming through payroll.

Who pays, and how to claim

Claim from whoever deducts your PAYE income tax and Class 1 NICs. For most temps that is the agency. If you work through an umbrella, it is the umbrella. The hirer never pays your SPP, not the warehouse operator and not the ward manager. Our umbrella company guide explains why the umbrella counts as the employer here.

1. Work out your qualifying week. Count back 15 weeks, Sunday to Saturday, from the expected week of childbirth. Your midwife sets the expected week.
2. Give written notice by the end of that week. Use the online paternity claim form, or form SC3 for a birth. State the due date, whether you want one or two weeks, and when each week starts. You must give 28 days notice of each start date.
3. Keep proof. Email beats a phone call to a consultant. Keep the sent copy, the reply, payslips for the 8-week period, and anything showing you stayed on the books.
4. Get the decision in writing. If the payer refuses, they must send you form SPP1 within 28 days of your claim. If you think the refusal is wrong, you can ask HMRC to decide. Its statutory payments team settles disagreements over SPP for free.
5. Chase gaps fast. If assignments dry up after you give notice, write down dates, who said what, and whether others kept getting shifts. That record matters if you need advice on detriment or discrimination.

Adoption and surrogacy have parallel rules with a matching week instead of a qualifying week and forms SC4 and SC5. The money is the same.

When the assignment ends before the birth

This is the cliff edge. SPP needs you still employed by the same payer when the baby is born. An agency temp whose relationship with the agency ends at week 24 of the pregnancy, or who gets taken off the books before the birth, gets no SPP, even if the earlier 26-week line looked safe.

The contrast cuts both ways. Start a new employee job after your partner is already pregnant and you now have day-one leave in Great Britain from the first morning. But you will not have the 26 weeks with that new employer to get pay. Leave yes, pay no. The mirror of the agency position.

Low earners face the hardest version. Below £129 average there is no SPP, full stop. An employee still gets the day-one leave, unpaid. A worker gets neither leave nor pay. Fathers and partners have no equivalent of Maternity Allowance to fall back on. That gap is the law as it stands, not an oversight in this guide. Mothers should read our maternity leave and pay guide, and anyone needing days off around the birth at short notice should check time off for a family emergency.

What changed in 2026, and what did not

1. 6 Apr 2024Paternity leave becomes flexible

   Two weeks can be taken as one block or two separate one-week blocks within 52 weeks of birth.

2. 6 Apr 2026Day-one paternity leave for employees

   The 26-week service rule for leave is removed in Great Britain. Workers still excluded. SPP untouched: 26 weeks and £129 still required.

3. 6 Apr 2026Day-one sick pay arrives

   Statutory Sick Pay loses its waiting days and its earnings floor. Useful contrast: Parliament removed the pay floor for sick pay but kept it for paternity pay.

4. 6 Apr 2026Bereaved partner leave

   Employee fathers and partners get up to 52 weeks leave if the mother or primary adopter dies in the first year. A day-one right. Pay rules under it are separate: take advice before assuming anything.

A wider government review of parental leave and pay is live, with a call for evidence already run and a summary published. No outcome date has been announced. Talk of merging worker and employee into a single status would, if ever enacted, collapse the whole leave and pay split this guide explains. There is no timetable.

Northern Ireland and Scotland

Scotland follows the same rules as England and Wales. Employment law is reserved, so day-one leave applies there too.

Northern Ireland differs, and the difference is large. Employment law is devolved and the 2026 day-one change does not extend there. Paternity leave in Northern Ireland still needs 26 weeks continuous employment by the end of the 15th week before the due date. SPP rates and thresholds mirror Great Britain at £194.32 and £129. In Northern Ireland the free advice route is the Labour Relations Agency, not Acas. See our Northern Ireland differences guide.