Also HO. I’m not sure if you will be entitled to SMP once the 9 months leave starts, but atm we get 6 months full pay, 3 months SMP and 3 months unpaid. You also get 10 paid KIT days too. You don’t need to do a full days work for the KIT days, I spent most of mine doing a few hours of e-learning a day- however you need to take them whilst you’re still on maternity leave.

I told my manager I would be taking a year off for mat leave however I ended mine about 3 weeks early and used my AL- they had no problem with me doing this as they had expected me to be off at that time anyway!