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SSP changes from 6 April 2026: what employers now have to pay
Statutory sick pay was reformed on 6 April 2026: waiting days abolished, the lower earnings limit removed, and the weekly rate is now the lower of £123.25 and 80% of normal weekly earnings. What UK employers must pay, how to handle an absence that straddles 6 April, and the rules most summaries still get wrong — every figure cited to legislation.gov.uk.
Statutory sick pay was reformed on 6 April 2026, and the change is larger than it looks from the headline. Waiting days are gone, the lower earnings limit is gone, and the weekly rate is no longer a single flat figure but a test between two numbers. The reforming provisions sit in the Employment Rights Act 2025 (c. 36), commenced on 6 April 2026 by SI 2026/373 reg 2; the operative text they amended lives in the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992. This guide sets out what a UK employer now has to pay, how to handle an absence that straddles 6 April, and the parts of the reform most summaries still state in the wrong tense.
TL;DR
- There are no waiting days. SSP is payable from the first qualifying day, because ERA 2025 s.10 omitted SSCBA 1992 s.155(1) and moved the period of entitlement to the first qualifying day.
- The weekly rate is the lower of £123.25 and 80% of normal weekly earnings (SSCBA 1992 s.157(1), the figure substituted by SI 2026/148 art. 8). The 80% branch selects a cap; it is never a floor.
- The lower earnings limit no longer bars entitlement — ERA 2025 s.11(3) omitted paragraph 2(c) of SSCBA Schedule 11, so low earners are now in scope and paid on the 80% branch.
- The daily amount is the weekly rate divided by the number of qualifying days in that week, never by seven (SSCBA 1992 s.157(3)).
- The maximum from one employer is 28 times the applicable weekly rate — a cash limit that shrinks with the employee’s rate, not a fixed calendar duration (SSCBA 1992 s.155(2)–(4)).
- An absence that began before 6 April 2026 and continued past it runs on one of three transitional regimes in SI 2026/373, not on the ordinary arithmetic above.
Work out what a specific absence costs with the statutory sick pay calculator — it applies the lower-of test, the daily apportionment and the 28-times cap from the same provisions cited below.
Do employers still have to apply waiting days before SSP starts?
No. This is the change most likely to be sitting live and wrong in a payroll configuration right now.
ERA 2025 s.10 rewrote the waiting-day machinery in four moves. It amended s.152 so that a period of incapacity for work can be “a period of one day which is, or of two or more consecutive days each of which is,” a day of incapacity; it substituted “first” for “second” in s.153(1) so the period of entitlement starts at the first qualifying day; it substituted “second” for “third” in s.154(1); and, decisively, in s.155 it directs: “In section 155 (limitations on entitlement), omit subsection (1).”
Subsection 155(1) was the three-waiting-day rule. It is not softened or narrowed — it is omitted, and in the consolidated text of SSCBA 1992 s.155 it now renders as a row of dots. The commencement is not implied either: SI 2026/373 reg 2 states that ss.10 to 13 of the 2025 Act “come into force on 6th April 2026”, and its paragraphs (c) and (d) commence the mirror-image Northern Ireland provisions at the same time.
One point of hygiene when correcting colleagues: the three-day rule was not invented by whoever is repeating it. It was real until 5 April 2026. What has happened is a tense error, not a fabricated number, and saying so is usually faster than arguing about whether the rule ever existed.
What must an employer pay under the new SSP rate?
You pay the lower of a flat weekly figure and 80% of the employee’s normal weekly earnings. SSCBA 1992 s.157(1) now reads: “The weekly rate of statutory sick pay that an employer must pay to an employee is the lower of— (a) £123.25, and (b) 80% of the employee’s normal weekly earnings.”
The £123.25 does not come from the commencement SI. It comes from SI 2026/148 art. 8, the uprating order, which directs: “In section 157(1) of the Contributions and Benefits Act (rate of payment of statutory sick pay) for ‘£118.75’ substitute ‘£123.25’.” The £118.75 in the Act as passed was superseded at commencement. Cite s.157(1) plus the uprating order for the general rate, and expect the flat figure to move again at the next uprating.
SSP at a glance from 6 April 2026
| What it governs | The position from 6 April 2026 | Provision |
|---|---|---|
| Waiting days | None — SSP is payable from the first qualifying day | ERA 2025 s.10, commenced by SI 2026/373 reg 2 |
| Lower earnings limit | No longer a bar to entitlement | ERA 2025 s.11(3) |
| Weekly rate | The lower of £123.25 and 80% of normal weekly earnings | SSCBA 1992 s.157(1), substituted by SI 2026/148 art. 8 |
| Daily amount | Weekly rate ÷ the number of qualifying days in that week — never ÷ 7 | SSCBA 1992 s.157(3) |
| Maximum from one employer | 28 × the applicable weekly rate — a cash cap, not a calendar duration | SSCBA 1992 s.155(2)–(4) |
| Normal weekly earnings | The relevant period runs between normal pay days, at least 8 weeks back from the critical date | SI 1982/894 reg 19(3) |
| Transitional flat rate | Normal weekly earnings £125–£154.05 with a period of entitlement spanning 6 April: held at a flat £123.25, 80% test switched off | SI 2026/373 reg 4 |
Northern Ireland moved in parallel. ERA 2025 ss.12 and 13 make the mirror-image amendments to the Northern Ireland contributions and benefits legislation, and SI 2026/373 reg 2 commenced them on the same day; the section numbers differ, so check the NI provisions directly rather than mapping across by hand.
Which employees became eligible when the lower earnings limit was removed?
Those you previously screened out on earnings. ERA 2025 s.11(3) is one sentence long: “In Schedule 11 (circumstances in which periods of entitlement to statutory sick pay do not arise), in paragraph 2, omit paragraph (c) (lower earnings limit).” The bar is deleted, not raised.
The consequence is arithmetic rather than dramatic. A low earner is eligible, and their weekly rate is 80% of normal weekly earnings, because for anyone earning under roughly £154 a week that branch is the lower of the two. An employee with £0 normal weekly earnings in the relevant period is still eligible — the lower-of test simply yields £0, which is a different thing from being excluded.
The consequential tidying sits in SI 2026/210, which amends the SSP (General) Regulations 1982 to “omit the explanation of how the critical date is calculated when an employee earned below the lower earnings limit” and to remove the surviving reference to the fourth day of a period of incapacity. If a legacy rule in your payroll still branches on a minimum earnings figure, that branch has no statutory basis behind it any more.
How do you work out the daily SSP amount for a partial week?
Divide the weekly rate by qualifying days, not by seven. SSCBA 1992 s.157(3) is explicit: “The amount of statutory sick pay payable by any one employer in respect of any day shall be the weekly rate applicable on that day divided by the number of days which are, in the week (beginning with Sunday) in which that day falls, qualifying days as between that employer and the employee concerned.”
Two details in that sentence carry weight. The week begins with Sunday, not with your payroll week or the employee’s rota week. And qualifying days are the days agreed between employer and employee under SSCBA 1992 s.154 — normally the days the employee would have worked, but they are an agreed set, not an automatic derivation from a shift pattern.
A worked example. An employee on the flat rate of £123.25 with five qualifying days a week has a daily rate of £24.65. Three qualifying days of absence produce £73.95. The same employee on a three-qualifying-day week has a daily rate of £41.08, because the same weekly rate is spread across fewer days. Run your own figures through the statutory sick pay calculator, which shows the weekly rate it selected and the daily rate it derived as separate lines precisely so the apportionment is auditable.
Normal weekly earnings themselves come from the relevant period in SI 1982/894 reg 19(3), which runs “between— (a) the last normal pay day to fall before the critical date; and (b) the last normal pay day to fall at least 8 weeks earlier” than that pay day. It is anchored to pay days, so it will rarely be exactly the eight calendar weeks before the first day of sickness.
How long does an employer have to keep paying SSP?
Until the entitlement limit is reached, and that limit is stated as an amount of money. SSCBA 1992 s.155(4): “The entitlement limit is an amount equal to 28 times the weekly rate applicable in accordance with section 157 below.” Section 155(3) fixes the moment: the maximum is reached “on the day on which the amount to which the employee has become entitled … first reaches or passes the entitlement limit.”
For an employee on the flat rate this behaves like 28 weeks and nobody notices the difference. For an employee on the 80% branch it does not. Their weekly rate is lower, so 28 times it is a lower cash figure, and a payroll that stores one fixed cash cap for the whole organisation will keep paying past the point where liability ended. The cap is per employer and per period of entitlement, so recompute it per case rather than treating it as a constant.
What do you do about an employee who was already off sick on 6 April 2026?
Treat it as a transitional case and work it manually. SI 2026/373 contains three distinct regimes for absences that span the reform date, and they apply to different populations.
- Reg 3 — part-way through the old waiting days. A qualifying period arises where a run of at least two consecutive days includes “not more than two days of incapacity for work … which fall on or before 5th April 2026 and are waiting days” plus at least one post-6-April day that is a qualifying day and “would have been a waiting day” but for the reform. SSP becomes payable for the post-6-April qualifying days, and reg 3(4) re-anchors the reg 19 critical date to the first day of that qualifying period.
- Reg 4 — the transitional flat rate. Where the period of entitlement began on or before 5 April 2026, had not terminated by 6 April, SSP was payable for at least one pre-6-April qualifying day, and normal weekly earnings are between £125 and £154.05 inclusive, s.157 has effect for the protection period as if it read “Statutory sick pay shall be payable by an employer at the weekly rate of £123.25.” Inside that band the 80% test is switched off rather than applied.
- Reg 5 — previously barred by the lower earnings limit. Where the period of incapacity began on or before 5 April and continues, and the limit was the only Schedule 11 bar, a post-6-April period of entitlement “is deemed to arise” on the employee’s first post-6-April day of incapacity. Reg 5(5) then carves out anyone whose period of incapacity began on or before 21 September 2025 and consisted only of consecutive days of incapacity through to 5 April 2026. Miss that carve-out and you pay SSP where there is no entitlement.
The statutory sick pay calculator does not compute any of these three. Enter a pre-6-April start date and it stops and says so rather than producing a plausible wrong number. Work those cases against the regulations directly, or take advice.
What do employers most often get wrong about the 2026 SSP reform?
- Payroll still configured for three waiting days. The single most common live misconfiguration, and the reason this reform is worth a post at all. Every short absence comes out under-paid.
- Reading the 80% branch as a floor. It is a cap-selection test. An employee on £110 a week gets £88.00, not the flat rate.
- Hard-coding a single cash figure as the 28-week cap. The statute says 28 times the applicable weekly rate, so a fixed figure over-pays everyone on the 80% branch.
- Using a calendar eight-week lookback. The relevant period in reg 19(3) is anchored to normal pay days around the critical date. ACAS’s “the 8 weeks before the sickness absence” is a simplification of the statute, not a restatement of it.
- Assuming the transitional rules only touch absences that start after 6 April. Regs 3 and 5 of SI 2026/373 both bite on absences that began before it, which is exactly the population most likely to be miscalculated.
- Missing the reg 5(5) long-term-sickness carve-out. Incapacity beginning on or before 21 September 2025 and running unbroken to 5 April 2026 is outside reg 5 entirely, and paying SSP anyway creates a liability that was never there.
How does Taito.ai help with sick-pay administration?
Absence dates, qualifying-day patterns and pay history usually live in three different places for a small employer — a shared calendar, a contract, and the payroll system — which is why the rate ends up recomputed by hand every time somebody calls in sick. Taito.ai is a people operations system that keeps absence records, working patterns and the employee’s pay history on one record, so the qualifying-day count and which rate branch applies fall out of the data rather than being reconstructed from three sources under time pressure.
Taito.ai is not legal advice and does not follow statutory change for you. The next uprating order will move £123.25, and noticing that remains the employer’s job. What the system handles is the part a spreadsheet handles worst: applying the same rule to every employee, every month, without the pattern being retyped.
Run a specific absence through the statutory sick pay calculator, check that the sick-pay particular in your written statement of employment particulars still describes the current regime rather than the repealed one, and see the companion guide to holiday pay for irregular-hours workers for the other calculation UK employers most often get wrong. The rest of our UK statutory guides, both calculators and the dated deadline calendar are on UK employment compliance.