TL;DR
- Statutory adoption leave is 52 weeks, split into 26 weeks of ordinary adoption leave and 26 weeks of additional adoption leave. The leave carries no service qualification. Statutory adoption pay does: 26 weeks' continuous employment ending with the week the employee is notified of the match, plus an earnings test.
- Statutory adoption pay runs for 39 weeks: 90 per cent of average weekly earnings for the first 6 weeks, then the lower of 90 per cent or the flat rate, which HMRC gives as £194.32 a week for the 2026 to 2027 tax year.
- The deadline that gets missed is the notice. The employee has seven days from being notified of the match to tell the employer the dates, and the employer then has 28 days to confirm them in return. Surrogacy runs on a different clock entirely, at the 15th week before the expected week of birth.
Adoption leave arrives in an employer's inbox perhaps once every few years, and almost never with notice to spare. Someone says they have been matched with a child and the placement is in three weeks. The policy, if there is one, was copied from the maternity policy and is wrong in three places. Meanwhile the employee has seven days to give formal notice and probably does not know it.
This article sets out the statutory position in Great Britain, with every rule quoted from GOV.UK or from the instrument that creates it. It covers the length of the leave, the two different tests for leave and for pay, the notice and evidence deadlines, and the four situations where the ordinary rules shift: a couple sharing the time off, an overseas adoption, a surrogacy arrangement, and fostering for adoption. It is general information and not legal advice.
If you want the notice date, the employer's confirmation, the payroll trigger and the return conversation sitting on one visible path rather than in one person's memory, see how New Dynamics workflows handle a process with fixed deadlines in it.
Adoption leave entitlement: 52 weeks in two unequal halves
GOV.UK states the headline plainly: "Statutory Adoption Leave is 52 weeks", made up of 26 weeks of ordinary adoption leave and 26 weeks of additional adoption leave. The regulations say the same thing in two places. Regulation 18(1) of the Paternity and Adoption Leave Regulations 2002 gives ordinary adoption leave as "a period of 26 weeks", and regulation 20(2) gives additional adoption leave as "a period of 26 weeks beginning on the day after the last day of his ordinary adoption leave period".
The two halves are not interchangeable, and the difference shows up at the end rather than the beginning. Additional adoption leave is only available to someone who actually took ordinary adoption leave for that child, and the right to return is weaker after it. More on that below.
Two limits catch employers out. Only one person in a couple takes the leave: GOV.UK says "Only 1 person in a couple can take adoption leave. The other partner could get paternity leave instead." And siblings placed together do not double anything. Regulation 15(4) is explicit that entitlement "shall not be affected by the placement for adoption of more than one child as part of the same arrangement". Two children, one entitlement.
The leave is a day one right. The pay is not.
This is the single most useful thing to get straight, because the two entitlements are tested completely differently.
For the leave, regulation 15(2) sets the conditions as being the child's "adopter" and having notified the agency that the employee agrees the child should be placed with them and on the date of placement, plus complying with the notice requirements. Length of service does not appear. GOV.UK's eligibility page lists the same three things: be an employee, give the correct notice, and give proof if the employer asks for it. So an employee matched in their second week of employment is entitled to 52 weeks of adoption leave.
For the pay, section 171ZL(2) of the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992 requires that the employee "has been in employed earner's employment with an employer for a continuous period of at least 26 weeks ending with the relevant week" and that their normal weekly earnings for the 8 weeks ending with that week "are not less than the lower earnings limit". Subsection (3) defines the relevant week as "the week in which the person is notified that he has been matched with the child for the purposes of adoption".
That matching week is the hinge of the whole calculation, and it is not the placement date. GOV.UK puts the earnings test in money: the employee must "earn on average at least £129 a week (before tax)". Treat that as the figure to re-check every April, because it tracks the lower earnings limit, which HMRC's employer rates give as "£129 per week" for the 2026 to 2027 tax year. If the employee does not qualify, there is a form: "Your employer must give you form SAP1 explaining why you cannot get Statutory Adoption Pay."
Statutory adoption pay for the 2026 to 2027 tax year
Statutory adoption pay runs for 39 weeks, not 52. The statute allows a longer period, capping the adoption pay period at "52 weeks", but the figure actually prescribed is in regulation 21(5) of the Statutory Paternity Pay and Statutory Adoption Pay (General) Regulations 2002: "the duration of any adoption pay period shall be a continuous period of 39 weeks". The last 13 weeks of the leave are unpaid unless a company scheme says otherwise.
The rate has two tiers. GOV.UK gives them as "90% of your average weekly earnings for the first 6 weeks" and then "£194.32 or 90% of your average weekly earnings (whichever is lower) for the next 33 weeks". HMRC's employer rates confirm the same flat figure for statutory adoption pay in the 2026 to 2027 tax year and note that, unlike statutory maternity pay, "All other rates apply from 6 April 2026". Quote the tax year whenever you quote the number.
The employer pays it and then recovers most of it. The employer guide says you "can usually only reclaim 92% of that amount" and may reclaim 109 per cent with Small Employers' Relief. The rates page puts a threshold on that: 109 per cent applies "if your total Class 1 National Insurance for the previous tax year is £45,000 or lower". The employer guide also closes the obvious escape route: "You still have to pay Statutory Adoption Pay even if you stop trading."
When adoption leave can start
Regulation 16(1) gives the employee two options for a UK adoption: the date the child is placed with them, or "a predetermined date ... which is no more than 14 days before the date on which the child is expected to be placed with the employee and no later than that date". Regulation 18(3) adds the detail payroll always asks about: if the employee is at work on the day of placement, the leave begins the day after.
One wrinkle worth knowing. GOV.UK's employer guide lists a third trigger, saying leave can start "when an employee has been matched with a child to be placed with them by a UK adoption agency". The regulation does not offer matching as a start date, and the regulation governs. Matching starts the notice clock and fixes the relevant week for pay. It does not start the leave.
Notice and evidence: seven days in, 28 days back
Regulation 17(2) gives the employee a tight window. Notice of the expected placement date and the chosen start date must be given "no more than seven days after the date on which the employee is notified of having been matched with the child for the purposes of adoption", or as soon as reasonably practicable if that was not possible.
Evidence is only required if the employer asks. When it does, regulation 17(3) wants "one or more documents issued by the adoption agency that matched the employee with the child" showing the agency's name and address, the date of the match and the date the agency expects to place the child. In practice that is the matching certificate. For pay, GOV.UK is firmer: proof of adoption is required, and "Proof is not needed for Statutory Adoption Leave unless they request it."
Then the obligation reverses. The employer has to write back. GOV.UK states it as "Your employer must confirm your leave start and end dates within 28 days", which regulation 17(7) frames as notifying the employee of the date the additional adoption leave period will end. Miss it and you lose something concrete. Regulation 25(1) normally requires an employee returning early to give "8 weeks' notice of the date on which he intends to return", but paragraph (5) disapplies the whole regulation where the employer did not send that confirmation. Pay needs its own 28 days of notice under section 171ZL(6).
Keeping in touch is ten days, not twenty six weeks
Regulation 21A(1) is the whole rule: "An employee may carry out up to 10 days' work for his employer during his statutory adoption leave period without bringing his statutory adoption leave to an end." GOV.UK calls these keeping in touch days and says they are optional, needing both sides to agree. The regulation agrees, and goes further: paragraph (5) says it confers no right on the employer "to require that any work be carried out" and no right on the employee to work. Paragraph (4) also protects ordinary contact, which does not count against the ten.
The 26 week figure people half remember belongs somewhere else, to the right to return. GOV.UK gives the strong right to return to the same job to an employee who takes "only 26 weeks of maternity or adoption leave". Beyond that, regulation 26(2) gives the job back "or, if it is not reasonably practicable for the employer to permit him to return to that job, to another job which is both suitable for him and appropriate for him to do in the circumstances". So the boundary between ordinary and additional adoption leave is a boundary in the strength of the return right, and that is why the two names matter.
Redundancy protection outlasts the leave. GOV.UK says the right to be offered a suitable alternative job "lasts up until 18 months from the date the child is born or adopted" and continues after the employee is back at work.
Five paid adoption appointments, and the partner's two unpaid ones
This is the entitlement most policies omit entirely. Section 57ZJ of the Employment Rights Act 1996 gives the adopter paid time off to attend appointments arranged by the agency. The limits are precise: no more than "five occasions", and on each one the maximum is "six and a half hours". It stops at the placement, because subsection (4) removes the entitlement on or after the date of placement, and siblings placed as one arrangement share the five occasions rather than getting five each.
The partner gets a shorter version, and unpaid. GOV.UK's paternity guidance gives unpaid leave to attend "2 adoption appointments after you've been matched with a child", also at up to six and a half hours each.
How it works for a couple
One of the two takes adoption leave. The other has two routes.
Paternity leave is the simple one: GOV.UK gives "up to 2 weeks' leave", taken together or as two separate one week blocks. Only one member of the couple can elect statutory adoption pay, which section 171ZL(4A) puts beyond doubt.
Shared parental leave is the flexible one, and it has its own tests. For an adoption, GOV.UK requires the parent taking the leave to have been "employed continuously by them for at least 26 weeks" by the end of the matching week, and to earn at least £129 a week for shared parental pay. The other parent faces a different test: working at least 26 of the 66 weeks before the week of placement, and having "earned at least £390 in total in 13 of the 66 weeks". Adoption leave has to be cut short before shared parental leave can be used. Section 75A(2A) of the Employment Rights Act 1996 is the hook, allowing regulations that let an employee "bring forward the date on which an ordinary adoption leave period ends". That decision is better made before the leave starts than halfway through it.
Overseas adoptions run on different dates
For a child adopted from abroad, the Paternity and Adoption Leave (Adoption from Overseas) Regulations 2003 replace the start date rules. Leave begins on "the date on which the child enters Great Britain" or on a predetermined date no later than 28 days after that. Note the geography: the instrument says Great Britain, while GOV.UK writes "the UK" because Northern Ireland has its own parallel regulations.
The notice rule is also different, and it is the one place where service length touches the leave. Notice of the official notification and the expected arrival date is due "no more than 28 days after the date on which the employee receives the official notification or the date on which he completes 26 weeks' continuous employment with the employer, whichever is later". The official notification is a defined term: written notification from the relevant domestic authority confirming that the adopter "is eligible to adopt and has been assessed and approved as being a suitable adoptive parent".
For pay, GOV.UK shifts the continuity test to the start of payment rather than the matching week: the employee must have been continuously employed "for at least 26 weeks when you start getting adoption pay". An adopter bringing a child from overseas with a partner must also sign form SC6, which GOV.UK says "confirms you're not taking paternity leave or pay".
Surrogacy: the parental order is the condition
Intended parents in a surrogacy arrangement take adoption leave, not maternity leave, and the Paternity, Adoption and Shared Parental Leave (Parental Order Cases) Regulations 2014 rewrite the relevant rules for them. An intended parent is defined as someone who, on the day of the child's birth, applies or intends to apply "during the period of 6 months beginning with that day" for a parental order and expects the court to make it. Section 54(3) of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 sets the same six months, and section 54(1)(b) adds a condition no HR policy can fix: "the gametes of at least one of the applicants were used to bring about the creation of the embryo". A sole intended parent applies under section 54A instead, and the 2014 regulations cover that route too.
Three practical differences follow. The leave starts at the birth: the substituted regulation 16 says it "begins on the day on which the child is born", or the day after if the employee is at work that day. The notice is much earlier, due "in or before the 15th week before the expected week of the child's birth". And the evidence is different: instead of a matching certificate, an employer may request "a parental statutory declaration", which GOV.UK says must be signed in the presence of a legal professional. A further notice of the actual birth date is due as soon as reasonably practicable afterwards.
One choice is worth flagging to the employee early. GOV.UK says that if you are genetically related to the child as the egg or sperm donor, "you can choose to get paternity leave and pay instead. You cannot get both." Two weeks against 52 is not a close decision, but it is the employee's to make.
Fostering for adoption, and where foster carers stand
Being a local authority foster carer is not, on its own, a route to adoption leave. Being a foster carer who is also an approved prospective adopter is. The definition of "placed for adoption" in regulation 2 of the 2002 regulations includes a child "placed in accordance with section 22C of the Children Act 1989 with a local authority foster parent who is also a prospective adopter", and section 75A(1A) of the Employment Rights Act 1996 confirms that the conditions for ordinary adoption leave may include "being a local authority foster parent" and being approved as a prospective adopter. GOV.UK puts the timing simply: if you are eligible, "you'll receive them from when the child comes to live with you".
The entitlement is not available twice for the same child. Regulation 15(1A) blocks a second period of ordinary adoption leave where leave was already taken on the section 22C placement, and section 171ZL(10) does the same for the pay.
Four situations fall outside the scheme altogether. GOV.UK lists them: you do not qualify if you "arrange a private adoption", become a special guardian or kinship carer, adopt a stepchild, or adopt a family member. A policy that says "adoption leave applies to all adoptions" is wrong four times over, and these are exactly the cases where an employer should decide in advance what discretionary leave it will offer instead.
How often this actually comes up
Rarely, which is the problem. The Department for Education's accredited official statistics for reporting year 2025, published on 26 November 2025, record the number of looked-after children who were adopted in England as "up by 20 children to 3,040". That counts children adopted from care in England, not adoption leave taken by employees, and no official source publishes how many employees take statutory adoption leave in a year. For the wider picture, see our HR statistics hub.
A process you run once every three years is a process nobody remembers, which is the argument for writing it down rather than improvising it. Our posts on leave and absence and maternity leave for employers cover the neighbouring policies an adoption leave policy should match.
Jurisdiction
The regulations quoted here extend to England, Wales and Scotland. Northern Ireland has its own parallel instruments, including the Paternity, Adoption and Shared Parental Leave (Parental Order Cases) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2015, so check the Northern Ireland position separately for staff based there. The statutory rates change every April, which is why every figure above names the 2026 to 2027 tax year. This is general information about the statutory position and not legal advice.
Frequently asked questions
How long is adoption leave in the UK?
Statutory adoption leave is 52 weeks, made up of 26 weeks of ordinary adoption leave followed by 26 weeks of additional adoption leave. Only one person in a couple can take it, and children placed together as part of the same arrangement give one entitlement rather than one each.
How much is statutory adoption pay?
Statutory adoption pay runs for 39 weeks. The first 6 weeks are paid at 90 per cent of average weekly earnings. The remaining 33 weeks are paid at the lower of 90 per cent of average weekly earnings or the flat weekly rate, which HMRC gives as £194.32 for the 2026 to 2027 tax year. The last 13 weeks of the leave are unpaid unless a company scheme improves on it.
Is adoption leave a day one right?
Yes. The regulations set no length of service condition for the leave, so an employee matched with a child in their first weeks of employment is still entitled to the full 52 weeks. Statutory adoption pay is different: it needs 26 weeks of continuous employment ending with the week the employee is notified of the match, plus average weekly earnings of at least the lower earnings limit.
What notice does an employee have to give for adoption leave?
Notice of the expected placement date and the chosen leave start date is due within seven days of being notified of the match, or as soon as reasonably practicable. Pay needs at least 28 days' notice. The employer then has 28 days to confirm the leave dates in writing. A surrogacy arrangement runs on a different clock, with notice due in or before the 15th week before the expected week of birth.
Can an employer ask for the matching certificate?
Yes, for leave the employer may request evidence, and for pay proof of adoption is required. The regulations ask for documents issued by the adoption agency showing the agency's name and address, the date of the match and the date the agency expects to place the child. For an overseas adoption the equivalent is the official notification plus evidence of the date the child entered the country.
Do foster carers get adoption leave?
Not by virtue of fostering alone. A local authority foster carer who is also an approved prospective adopter, with the child placed under section 22C of the Children Act 1989, is inside the scheme and the leave runs from when the child comes to live with them. Private adoptions, special guardianship and kinship care, adopting a stepchild and adopting a family member all fall outside statutory adoption leave and pay.
Your next step: write the dates down before you need them
- Take your current family leave policy and check whether adoption appears at all. If it only cross-refers to the maternity policy, it is wrong on the start date, the notice window and the appointments.
- Add the two deadlines as named obligations: the employee's seven days from the match, and your 28 days to confirm the dates back.
- Write the five paid adoption appointments at up to six and a half hours each into the policy, and the partner's two unpaid ones.
- Record which tax year each figure comes from, and diary a review every April when the statutory rates change.
- Decide now what you will offer in the four cases that fall outside the statutory scheme, so the answer is not invented under pressure.
- Set the payroll trigger from the matching week, not the placement date, because that is the week the continuity and earnings tests are measured against.
For the policy wrapper around all of this, read and download our employee handbook guide. The guide is free to read, and the PDF uses our short download form.
Want the notice dates, the confirmation and the return conversation to run on one visible path instead of in four inboxes? Book a New Dynamics demo and bring your current family leave policy. You can also email contact@new-dynamics.com.
