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Statutory sick pay in the UK: a guide for employers
No waiting days, no lower earnings limit, and a weekly rate that is the lower of £123.25 and 80% of normal weekly earnings. Plus the three transitional regimes for absences that straddle the reform, which no calculator should be guessing at.
Someone is off sick. Payroll needs two numbers: what you pay a week, and what that comes to for the days actually missed.
Both changed on 6 April 2026, and the change is larger than the headline suggests. No waiting days. No lower earnings limit. And a weekly rate that is now a comparison rather than a figure.
TL;DR
- Waiting days are gone: SSP is payable from the first qualifying day you’re off sick, not the fourth.
- The lower earnings limit no longer applies, so employees earning any amount can qualify.
- The weekly rate is the lower of £123.25 and 80% of normal weekly earnings — never a flat figure.
- These changes apply to absences from 6 April 2026 onward.
- You keep paying until you’ve paid out 28 times the applicable weekly rate — a cash cap, not a fixed number of weeks.
What changed with UK statutory sick pay?
Three things changed at once, under ss.10 to 13 of the Employment Rights Act 2025 (ERA 2025), commenced by SI 2026/373 reg 2. The underlying weekly-rate and daily-amount rules still live in the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992 (SSCBA):
| 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 |
| 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 ÷ 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 | Relevant period runs between normal pay days, at least 8 weeks back from the critical date | SI 1982/894 reg 19(3) |
Next: open your payroll’s SSP configuration and look for a waiting-day field. If it is there and populated, every short absence you have processed since April is under-paid.
Are waiting days still part of UK statutory sick pay?
No — waiting days were abolished for absences from 6 April 2026, under four changes made by ERA 2025 s.10.
A period of incapacity can now be a single day (s.152). Entitlement starts a day earlier too: the first qualifying day of the absence, not the second (s.153(1)). The matching qualifying-day count in s.154(1) moved one day earlier as well. Decisively, the old three-waiting-day rule — SSCBA 1992 s.155(1) — was omitted outright, not narrowed or softened; in the consolidated text it now renders as a row of dots.
One point of hygiene when correcting a colleague: the three-day rule was not invented by whoever is repeating it. It was real until 5 April 2026. That is a tense error, not a fabricated number, and saying so is usually faster than arguing about whether the rule ever existed.
What is the weekly rate of UK statutory sick pay?
The weekly rate is the lower of (a) £123.25 and (b) 80% of the employee’s normal weekly earnings (SSCBA 1992 s.157(1)).
The £123.25 is not from the commencement SI. The figure rose from £118.75 — the amount in the Act as passed — to £123.25 under the uprating order, SI 2026/148 art. 8. Cite s.157(1) plus the uprating order. Expect the flat figure to move again at the next uprating.
The 80% branch selects a cap. It is never a floor.
| Normal weekly earnings | 80% of that | Weekly rate |
|---|---|---|
| £110 | £88.00 | £88.00 |
| £150 | £120.00 | £120.00 |
| £400 | £320.00 | £123.25 |
Next: if your system stores a single SSP rate for everyone, it is wrong for every employee earning under roughly £154 a week.
Who is now eligible for statutory sick pay after the lower earnings limit was removed?
Anyone you previously screened out for earning too little now qualifies: the lower earnings limit is gone, not raised, under a straight repeal of Schedule 11 paragraph 2(c) (ERA 2025 s.11(3)).
The consequence is arithmetic rather than dramatic. A low earner is now eligible, and their weekly rate is 80% of normal weekly earnings, because below 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.
Consequential tidying strips two now-redundant pieces from the 1982 Regulations (SI 2026/210). Out go the explanation of how the critical date was calculated for earners below the lower earnings limit (LEL), and the reference to the fourth day of a period of incapacity.
Next: 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 calculate the daily amount of statutory sick pay?
Divide the weekly rate by the number of qualifying days in that week, not by seven. The amount for any day is the weekly rate divided by the number of days that are, in the week beginning with Sunday in which that day falls, qualifying days as between that employer and employee (SSCBA 1992 s.157(3)).
Two details carry weight. The week begins with Sunday, not your payroll week, not the rota week. And qualifying days are agreed between employer and employee (s.154): normally the days they would have worked, but an agreed set rather than an automatic derivation from a shift pattern.
Normal weekly earnings themselves come from the relevant period (SI 1982/894 reg 19(3)), which runs between the last normal pay day before the critical date and the last normal pay day at least eight weeks earlier. It is anchored to pay days, so it will rarely be exactly the eight calendar weeks before the first day of sickness.
Next: the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS) simplifies this to “the 8 weeks before the sickness absence” — a simplification of reg 19(3), not a restatement of it. If your lookback is a calendar count, it is picking up the wrong weeks.
How long do you keep paying statutory sick pay?
Until you reach the entitlement limit — an amount of money, not a duration.
The entitlement limit is an amount equal to 28 times the weekly rate applicable under s.157 (SSCBA 1992 s.155(4)). That moment is fixed as when the cumulative amount first reaches or passes the limit (s.155(3)).
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. A payroll storing one fixed cash cap for the whole organisation will keep paying past the point where liability ended.
Next: the cap is per employer and per period of entitlement. Recompute it per case rather than treating it as a constant.
What happens to sick pay for absences that straddle 6 April 2026?
One of three transitional regimes applies, depending on where the absence falls relative to 6 April 2026 (SI 2026/373). Treat these as transitional and work them manually.
| Regime | Who it covers | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Reg 3 — mid-waiting-days | A run of at least two consecutive days with not more than two pre-6-April waiting days plus at least one post-6-April qualifying day that would have been a waiting day | SSP becomes payable for the post-6-April qualifying days; the reg 19 critical date is re-anchored to the first day of that qualifying period (reg 3(4)) |
| Reg 4 — transitional flat rate | Period of entitlement began on or before 5 April, had not terminated by 6 April, SSP was payable for at least one pre-6-April qualifying day, and normal weekly earnings are £125 to £154.05 inclusive | Rate held flat at £123.25 for the protection period; the 80% test is switched off rather than applied |
| Reg 5 — previously barred by the lower earnings limit | Employee whose earnings previously fell below the lower earnings limit | A post-6-April period of entitlement is deemed to arise on the employee’s first post-6-April day of incapacity, except incapacity beginning on or before 21 September 2025 and running unbroken to 5 April 2026, which falls outside reg 5 entirely (reg 5(5)) |
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 rather than producing a plausible wrong number.
What are the most common UK statutory sick pay mistakes?
Payroll most often fails on the same six points, from waiting days that no longer apply to a long-term-sickness carve-out that is easy to miss.
| Mistake | Consequence |
|---|---|
| Payroll still configured for three waiting days | Every short absence comes out under-paid |
| Reading the 80% branch as a floor | 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 rule is 28 times the applicable weekly rate, so a fixed figure over-pays everyone on the 80% branch |
| Using a calendar eight-week lookback | Picks up the wrong weeks instead of the pay-day-anchored relevant period in reg 19(3) |
| Assuming the transitional rules only touch absences starting after 6 April | Regs 3 and 5 both bite on absences that began before it |
| Missing the reg 5(5) long-term-sickness carve-out | Pays SSP where there is no entitlement at all |
Northern Ireland moved in parallel, with mirror-image amendments commenced the same day (ERA 2025 ss.12 and 13). The section numbers differ, so check the NI provisions directly rather than mapping across by hand.
How does Taito.ai help with this?
Every statutory sick pay figure above hangs off the absence record: when the incapacity began and which days are qualifying days for that person. Taito.ai is a people operations system that records those absences to the day against each employee and keeps them maintained automatically.
Sources
- Employment Rights Act 2025 — ss.10 to 13
- Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992 — ss.152 to 157 and Schedule 11
- SI 2026/373 — commencement and transitional provision
- SI 2026/148 art. 8 — the uprating order
- SI 1982/894 reg 19 — normal weekly earnings
- SI 2026/210 — consequential amendments removing the below-LEL critical-date rules
- GOV.UK — statutory sick pay
Rates change at each uprating. The £123.25 figure above applies from 6 April 2026 and will move again; noticing that remains the employer’s job.
Disclaimer
Taito.ai does not provide legal, tax or accounting advice. This article is general information about the law as it stood on the date above, not advice on your situation, and it is not a substitute for it. Rates and thresholds change. Check with a qualified adviser before acting on anything here.
