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Compliance

UK employment compliance: a guide for employers

What you owe a UK worker, and by when: statutory sick pay after the reform, holiday for irregular-hours workers, the 48-hour week and the day-one written statement. Every figure links to legislation.gov.uk so you can check it.

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UK employment compliance: a guide for employers

At a glance

  • SSP has no waiting days and no lower-earnings-limit bar since 6 April 2026; the weekly rate is the lower of £123.25 and 80% of normal weekly earnings, and the 80% branch is a cap, never a floor.
  • Irregular-hours and part-year workers do not get 5.6 weeks: they accrue 12.07% of hours worked per pay period under reg 15B, capped at 28 days.
  • A signed 48-hour opt-out disapplies one average and nothing else; daily rest, weekly rest, rest breaks and the night-work limit all survive it.
  • Every worker, not only every employee, is owed a written statement of particulars in a single document no later than the first day of employment.
  • Three transitional regimes apply to sickness that straddles 6 April 2026, and they are not interchangeable.
  • The tax year carries a fixed set of PAYE, RTI and year-end deadlines, but no statutory holiday-year boundary: that is per worker, per contract.

You have hired someone in the UK, and four bodies of statutory obligation apply from the first day. One of them changed on 6 April 2026 in a way that is still sitting wrong in a lot of payroll software, and two of the others turn on words that do not mean what they look like.

This page is the map. Each section gives you the rule, the numbers you need at month-end, and a link to the full treatment.

Start where you are. Someone off sick? What you pay, and from which day: the answer changed, and the old one is still configured in most systems. Zero-hours or variable-hours staff on the payroll? Holiday for irregular-hours workers, who are not on 5.6 weeks at all. Someone signed an opt-out and you are rostering against it? What that opt-out actually disapplies: less than you think. Onboarding this week? What every worker is owed on day one. Want the year on one page? The recurring deadlines.

What must an employer pay for sick leave?

From the first qualifying day, at the lower of £123.25 and 80% of normal weekly earnings. No waiting days, no earnings threshold.

Sections 10 to 13 of the Employment Rights Act 2025, commenced by SI 2026/373 reg 2, removed the three waiting days and took the lower earnings limit out of the eligibility test entirely.

What it governs The position from 6 April 2026 Provision
Waiting days None — 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 duration SSCBA 1992 s.155(2)–(4)

Three things go wrong repeatedly. The 80% branch is a cap-selection test, not a floor: an employee on £110 a week gets £88.00, not the flat rate. The 28-times cap is a cash figure that moves with the employee’s rate, so a single hard-coded ceiling over-pays everyone on the 80% branch. And the population most likely to be miscalculated is the one that was already off sick when the reform landed: SI 2026/373 carries three separate transitional regimes for absences straddling 6 April, including a carve-out for incapacity that began on or before 21 September 2025.

Read more: Statutory sick pay in the UK: the lower-of test worked through, the daily apportionment, the pay-day-anchored relevant period, and all three transitional regimes. Or price a specific absence with the statutory sick pay calculator.

How much holiday do irregular-hours workers get, and what do you pay?

Not 5.6 weeks. Since leave years beginning on or after 1 April 2024, irregular-hours and part-year workers accrue 12.07% of the hours worked in each pay period under WTR reg 15B, capped at 28 days a leave year.

Reg 15B does not sit alongside the ordinary entitlement: it replaces it. Regs 13(A1) and 13A(A1) switch the four-week and 1.6-week entitlements off for these workers, so there is nothing to pro-rate.

What it governs The rule Provision
Ordinary statutory leave 4 weeks + 1.6 weeks, aggregate capped at 28 days — “5.6 weeks” is not in the WTR reg 13, reg 13A
Irregular-hours / part-year accrual 12.07% of hours worked, last day of each pay period, capped at 28 days reg 15B
What must be in a week’s pay Task-linked commission, status/seniority payments, regularly-paid overtime reg 16(3ZA)
Reference period 52 weeks in which pay was payable, or complete weeks employed if fewer reg 16(3)(e)
Look-back Up to 104 weeks, and only where a week had no remuneration payable at all reg 16(3)(f)(i)
Rolled-up pay 12.07% uplift on remuneration for work done — reg 15B leave only reg 16A

Two corrections carry most of the money. 104 weeks is not the reference window: it is a conditional bound that engages only where a week had no remuneration payable at all, and if no such week exists it never engages. And rolled-up holiday pay is lawful for reg 15B leave and nothing else; extending it to a regular-hours worker’s leave is outside reg 16A, which does not authorise it.

There is no statutory holiday year either. Reg 13(3) anchors each worker’s leave year to their contract, or failing that to their start-date anniversary, so boundaries are tracked per worker, not read off one calendar.

Read more: Holiday pay for irregular-hours and part-year workers: who is in scope, accrual during sick leave under reg 15C, and the payslip duty in reg 16A(7). Or price a period of leave with the holiday pay calculator.

What does the 48-hour limit actually require?

An average, and one that a signed opt-out removes. Nothing else.

Reg 4(1) opens “Unless his employer has first obtained the worker’s agreement in writing…”, and that opening clause is the whole opt-out. It reaches no other regulation.

Provision The limit Removed by an individual opt-out?
reg 4(1) Average 48 hours per seven days over the reference period Yes — the only thing it does
reg 6(1) Night workers: average eight hours in each 24 No
reg 10(1) Daily rest: 11 consecutive hours in each 24 No
reg 11(1) Weekly rest: 24 hours in each seven days No
reg 12(1) Rest break where the working day exceeds six hours No

The only instrument that reaches the rest and night-work provisions is a collective or workforce agreement under reg 23(a). An individual signature cannot, and treating one as though it can is the largest live exposure most employers carry.

Two more details. The reference period is 17 weeks by default, 26 for reg 21-excepted workers, and up to 52 by collective or workforce agreement. And an opt-out is never permanent: withdrawable on seven days’ notice by default, or whatever the agreement specifies up to a three-month ceiling.

Read more: The 48-hour week: what an opt-out actually disapplies: the averaging formula and excluded days, the three reference periods, and the two separate record-keeping duties in regs 9 and 4(2).

What must you give a worker on day one?

A single document, containing the ERA 1996 s.1(3) and s.1(4) particulars, not later than the beginning of the employment, and to every worker, not only every employee.

The written statement is not the employment contract; it is a free-standing statutory duty with its own list, its own deadline and its own single-document requirement.

Rule The position Provision
Who Every worker — casual and zero-hours included, on identical timing s.1(1)
When Not later than the beginning of the employment, in a single document s.1(2)
May follow within two months Only s.1(4)(d)(iii), (j), (l) and the s.3 note — pensions, collective agreements, training entitlement, the disciplinary note s.2(4)
Holiday particular Sufficient for entitlement, including accrued pay on termination, to be precisely calculated s.1(4)(d)(i)
Probationary period Its conditions and its duration, on the narrow definition at s.1(6) s.1(4)(ga)
Currency Accurate as at a specified date not more than seven days before the statement is given s.1(4)

Two limbs quietly bite. A holiday clause saying “28 days” is not precisely calculable for a reg 15B worker, so it fails s.1(4)(d)(i) for exactly the population whose paperwork is most likely to be a template. And a sick-pay clause still describing waiting days and an earnings threshold now hands every new starter a description of a repealed regime.

Read more: The day-one written statement: the full particulars table, what is and is not on the two-month instalment list, and why a review period starting in month three is not a probationary period.

What are the recurring deadlines?

The obligations above are a calendar as much as they are content.

When What Where
Monthly Employer Payment Summary by the 19th · PAYE by the 22nd HMRC
Tax year end Final Full Payment Submission by 19 April · P60s by 31 May · P11D and P11D(b) by 6 July · Class 1A NI by 22 July · PSA payment by 22 October HMRC
Rolling, per worker The 48-hour average over 17 weeks, 26 for reg 21 workers, up to 52 by agreement Working time
Per absence, per worker 28 × the applicable weekly rate, recomputed per employee Sick pay
Per hire Single document on day one · four particulars within two months Employment contracts

Two boundaries sit outside that grid. There is no statutory holiday year: it is per worker, per contract, so it appears in no calendar and has to be tracked individually. And one dated change is ahead: on 1 January 2027 the qualifying period for unfair dismissal drops from two years to six months, and the cap on the compensatory award goes.

A dated listing covering the full 2026/27 tax year, with a downloadable .ics file, is in the UK HR compliance calendar, which is the canonical source for those dates.

How does Taito.ai help with this?

Absence dates, working patterns, holiday accrual and the day-one paperwork usually live in three or four places for a small employer (a rota tool, a payroll export, a signed PDF and somebody’s inbox), which is why the numbers behind these deadlines get reconstructed by hand every time one lands.

Taito.ai is a people operations system, not payroll and not legal advice. It keeps absence records, working patterns, holiday balances and employment documents on one record, so the qualifying-day count, the accrual balance, the reference-period average and the particulars a statement needs fall out of the data rather than being rebuilt under time pressure.

It does not track statutory change on your behalf. The next uprating order will move £123.25, the Working Time Regulations will be amended again, and noticing that stays the employer’s job. What the system handles is the part a spreadsheet handles worst: applying the same rule to every worker, every pay period, without the pattern being retyped.

Start a free trial or see how Taito.ai works.

Frequently asked questions

Do employers still have to apply three waiting days before SSP starts?
No. Waiting days were abolished for absences from 6 April 2026. Employment Rights Act 2025 s.10(6) omits SSCBA 1992 s.155(1) (the subsection that made statutory sick pay unpayable for the first three qualifying days) and s.10(4) re-anchors the period of entitlement to the first qualifying day instead of the second. Those provisions were commenced on 6 April 2026 by SI 2026/373 reg 2. In the consolidated text, s.155(1) now renders as a row of dots: an omitted subsection rather than a live rule. Say this plainly to anyone who insists the three-day rule survives. It was a real rule, correctly remembered but stated in the wrong tense; it applied until 5 April 2026 and it does not apply now. If your payroll software still asks you to enter waiting days before it will produce a figure, it is running a repealed regime and will under-pay every short absence you process through it.
What SSP must an employer pay from 6 April 2026?
You pay the lower of two figures, worked out for each employee separately. 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 figure was substituted with effect from 6 April 2026 by the Social Security Benefits Up-rating Order 2026 (SI 2026/148), art. 8. The 80% branch is a cap-selection test, not a floor beneath the flat rate. An employee whose normal weekly earnings are £110 has a weekly rate of £88.00, because 80% of £110 is lower than £123.25, not £123.25. An employee earning £400 a week has a weekly rate of £123.25, because the flat figure is the lower of the two. Run both numbers every time and take the smaller one.
An employee was already off sick before 6 April 2026 — how does the reform apply?
Three separate transitional regimes in SI 2026/373 may apply, and they are not interchangeable. Reg 3 covers an employee part-way through the old waiting days on 6 April, and re-anchors the reg 19 "critical date" to the first day of that qualifying period. Reg 4 covers an employee already in a period of entitlement whose normal weekly earnings fall between £125 and £154.05: for the protection period they are held at a flat £123.25 with the 80% test switched off. Reg 5 deems a fresh period of entitlement for someone the lower earnings limit had previously barred, but reg 5(5) carves out anyone whose incapacity began on or before 21 September 2025 and ran unbroken to 5 April 2026. Taito.ai's statutory sick pay calculator does not compute any of these three regimes, and stops rather than guessing when you enter a pre-reform start date; work those cases case by case against the regulations, or take advice.
What counts as normal remuneration for holiday pay?
More than basic pay. WTR 1998 reg 16(3ZA) requires three kinds of payment to be included in a week's pay: payments, including commission, "which are intrinsically linked to the performance of tasks which a worker is obliged to carry out under the terms of their contract"; payments "for professional or personal status relating to length of service, seniority or professional qualifications"; and other payments, such as overtime, "which have been regularly paid to a worker in the 52 weeks preceding the calculation date". Read the scope carefully. Reg 16(3ZA) names entitlement under regs 13 and 15B. Reg 13A's additional 1.6 weeks is simply absent from that list, which is not the same as a rule that reg 13A leave may be paid at basic pay. Reg 13A leave is still a week's pay under reg 16(1); it just lacks the reg 16(3ZA) additions, so the difference is narrower than the shorthand suggests.
Which of your workers are irregular-hours or part-year workers?
Only those meeting the definitions in WTR 1998 reg 15B, and only for leave years beginning on or after 1 April 2024. This matters in both directions. For a worker who does meet them, reg 15B displaces the ordinary entitlement outright: regs 13(A1) and 13A(A1) switch the separate four-week and 1.6-week entitlements off, so there is one accrued entitlement rather than a 5.6-week figure to pro-rate. For a worker who does not, 12.07% accrual has no statutory basis at all and applying it is likely to under-state what they are owed. A part-time worker on a fixed two-day week is not automatically an irregular-hours worker; nor is every zero-hours worker automatically a part-year worker. Check each contract against the definitions rather than classifying by job title or by how variable the rota feels in practice.
Is holiday pay based on 52 weeks or 104 weeks?
52 weeks by default. WTR 1998 reg 16(3)(e)(ii) substitutes 52 for the twelve-week reference period that ERA 1996 ss.221 to 224 would otherwise use, or, where the worker has been employed for less than 52 complete weeks at the calculation date, the number of complete weeks actually worked under reg 16(3)(e)(i). The 104-week figure is not a second reference window and not a default. Reg 16(3)(f)(i) is conditional: it only applies "in any case where section 223(2) or 224(3) applies", that is, where a week has to be skipped because no remuneration at all was payable for it, and it then bounds how far back you may reach while looking for paid weeks. If no such week exists, the 104-week bound never engages. And where fewer than 52 paid weeks are found inside it, reg 16(3)(f)(ii) makes the divisor the number of weeks actually found.
When is rolled-up holiday pay lawful?
For reg 15B leave, and nothing else. WTR 1998 reg 16A(1) applies "in relation to pay due to a worker under regulation 16(1) in respect of leave to which the worker is entitled under regulation 15B", and reg 16A(2) then permits that pay to be made "by way of a 12.07% uplift to the worker's remuneration for work done". Extend the mechanism to a regular-hours worker's reg 13 or reg 13A leave and you are outside reg 16A, which says nothing to authorise it. Two further duties travel with the choice. Regs 16A(4) to (6) require a rolled-up worker who goes on sick or statutory leave to be paid, for each pay period of that leave, the average holiday pay they received per pay period over a 52-week relevant period beforehand. Reg 16A(7) requires the itemised pay statement to show the holiday pay paid in the period.
Does a 48-hour opt-out remove the rest break and daily rest requirements?
No. An opt-out obtained under regulation 4(1) of the Working Time Regulations 1998 disapplies one thing only: the average of 48 hours for each seven days. Every other limit in Part II survives it untouched. Your workers keep 11 consecutive hours of daily rest in each 24-hour period under reg 10(1), 24 hours of uninterrupted weekly rest in each seven-day period under reg 11(1), and a rest break once the working day exceeds six hours under reg 12(1). Night workers keep the separate 8-hours-per-24 average in reg 6(1). The only route that reaches those provisions is a collective or workforce agreement under reg 23(a), which may modify or exclude regs 6(1) to (3) and (7), 10(1), 11(1) and (2) and 12(1). An individual signature cannot do it, and treating one as though it can is the largest live exposure most employers carry.
What must a 48-hour opt-out agreement contain?
Start from the fact that the opt-out is not a free-standing right. Regulation 4(1) opens with the words "Unless his employer has first obtained the worker's agreement in writing to perform such work", so the agreement must be in writing and must be obtained before the limit is exceeded, not documented afterwards. Regulation 5(2) then governs its terms: the agreement "may either relate to a specified period or apply indefinitely", and, subject to any provision in the agreement for a different period of notice, it is "terminable by the worker by giving not less than seven days' notice to his employer in writing". Reg 5(3) caps that: where the agreement does set its own notice period, that period "shall not exceed three months". So seven days is the default, and three months is the outer bound on anything longer you write in.
Is the 48-hour reference period always 17 weeks?
No. Seventeen weeks is the default, not the only option. Regulation 4(3) gives you either successive 17-week periods where a relevant agreement provides for them, or otherwise any rolling 17-week period in the course of the worker's employment. Where a worker has been employed for less than 17 weeks, reg 4(4) uses the period elapsed since they started. For workers excluded from certain provisions by reg 21 (the excepted activities, such as security and surveillance work or a need for continuity of service), reg 4(5) substitutes 26 weeks for every reference to 17. And a collective or workforce agreement may, under reg 23(b), substitute a different period "not exceeding 52 weeks" for objective or technical reasons or reasons concerning the organisation of work. Applying 17 weeks to a reg 21 population understates the averaging window.
What must be in an employment contract on day one?
You must give every worker a written statement of particulars, and ERA 1996 s.1(2) requires the particulars set out in s.1(3) and s.1(4) to be "included in a single document" given "not later than the beginning of the employment". Section 1(3) covers the names of employer and worker, the date employment began, and (for an employee) the date continuous employment began. Section 1(4) covers pay and pay intervals; hours of work, including normal working hours, the days of the week the worker is required to work and whether those may vary; holidays and holiday pay; sickness and sick pay; any other paid leave; pensions; other benefits; notice on both sides; job title or description; any fixed term; any probationary period; place of work; collective agreements; overseas work over a month; and training entitlements. Only a narrow set may follow later.
Does the written statement apply to workers or only employees?
Workers, which is the broader category. ERA 1996 s.1(1) reads: "Where a worker begins employment with an employer, the employer shall give to the worker a written statement of particulars of employment." The word is worker throughout the section, not employee, so casual, zero-hours and other non-employee worker populations are in scope on exactly the same day-one timing as permanent staff. The one place the section still distinguishes the two is s.1(3)(c), which requires the date on which continuous employment began only "in the case of a statement given to an employee". Everything else in s.1(3) and s.1(4) applies across the board. In practice this is the limb most often missed, because onboarding paperwork tends to be built around the permanent-employee path and short-hours or casual workers get handled by exception, late, or not at all. The deadline does not soften for them: s.1(2)(b) still requires the statement "not later than the beginning of the employment".
Which particulars can be given within two months?
A deliberately narrow set. ERA 1996 s.2(4) provides that a statement, insofar as it relates to the particulars required by "section 1(4)(d)(iii), (j) and (l) and the note required by section 3", may be given in instalments and "must be given not later than two months after the beginning of the employment, even where the employment ends before that date." Decoded, that is pensions and pension schemes, any collective agreements directly affecting the terms of employment, and any training entitlement provided by the employer, plus the s.3 note on disciplinary and grievance procedures. Everything else in s.1(3) and s.1(4) belongs in the single day-one document under s.1(2)(a). Note what is not on the instalment list: overseas work under s.1(4)(k), and the employer-required training limbs at s.1(4)(m) and (n), which sit immediately after the instalment-eligible s.1(4)(l) and are routinely lumped in with it. Note too the closing words: a worker who leaves in week three is still owed the instalment.
What must the statement say about holiday pay?
Enough for the worker to do the arithmetic. ERA 1996 s.1(4)(d)(i) requires terms and conditions relating to "entitlement to holidays, including public holidays, and holiday pay (the particulars given being sufficient to enable the worker's entitlement, including any entitlement to accrued holiday pay on the termination of employment, to be precisely calculated)". That is a higher bar than naming a number of days. For a worker on a fixed pattern, stating the entitlement and the leave year will usually meet it. For an irregular-hours or part-year worker accruing under WTR reg 15B, a flat figure is not precisely calculable at all: the statement has to describe the accrual mechanism and how a week's pay is determined under reg 16. The accrued-pay-on-termination wording in the limb is easy to skip, and it is the part a leaver is most likely to test. Section 1(4)(d)(i) is not on the s.2(4) instalment list, so this belongs in the day-one document.

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