Since 6 April 2026 Statutory Sick Pay can be payable from the first full qualifying day rather than after three waiting days, and the earnings floor that excluded the lowest paid has gone. For an employer with real absence, this is a payroll cost change rather than a paperwork one.
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Two things, and between them they change who gets statutory sick pay (SSP) and how much of it they get.
A third change follows from the second: the amount is no longer simply the flat rate for everybody. It is now the lower of 80% of average weekly earnings or the standard weekly rate, so for lower-paid staff the calculation has to be run rather than assumed. For the 2026/27 tax year, the standard weekly SSP rate is £123.25.
Removing the earnings threshold does not mean every sickness absence automatically qualifies. The employee must still meet the other SSP conditions, including having started work under an employment contract, being unable to work for at least one full working day and notifying the employer as required. SSP can normally be paid for up to 28 weeks, subject to the eligibility rules, and an employer may offer more than the statutory minimum through a company or contractual sick pay scheme.
The rules that apply depend on when an absence started, not when it ended, which matters more than it sounds and is covered further down.
Under the old rules the first three qualifying days were unpaid, and statutory sick pay began on day four. Most short absences never reached it. A two-day bug, a day off with a back injury, two days lost to a stomach upset: none of those produced any statutory sick pay at all.
Acas puts the change in one line.
payment from day one - statutory sick pay is payable from the first day of sickness, removing the 3 'waiting days'
The significance is in which absences that captures. The three-day rule did not reduce the cost of long absences much, because they ran well past day four anyway. What it did was mean short absences did not attract SSP under the previous waiting-day rules at all. So the change does not affect the employee who is off for six weeks nearly as much as it affects the employer whose team takes a day here and two days there across a year. Employers with frequent short-term sickness absences may notice the financial effect of the change more quickly.
The second change is the one that brings new people into scope rather than new days. There used to be an earnings floor, and for 2025/26 it was the lower earnings limit of £125 a week: below it, an employee got no SSP whatever. The government estimated around 1.3 million workers were in that position.
In practice that group is part-time staff, people on low hours, and second jobs. For a care employer with a bank of part-time weekend staff, or a cleaning company with short shifts, this is not a marginal category: it may be a large part of the payroll.
For an employer this is the group whose entitlement changed most, rather than a handful of edge cases. If somebody previously received nothing because of the earnings floor alone, they may now qualify, and the amount payable has to be worked out rather than assumed.
HMRC states the rate in a single line, and it is worth taking in its own words because the second half of it is the part payroll gets wrong.
The weekly rate of Statutory Sick Pay (SSP) for 2026 to 2027 is £123.25 or 80% of the employee's average weekly earnings, whichever is lower.
Two figures, and the lower one is the one to pay. That is a different instruction from the one payroll followed for years, which was to pay a single rate to anybody off sick, and it is why the calculation now has to be run per employee rather than looked up once. Which of the two bites depends on earnings, so the answer varies across a single payroll and can vary for the same employee between one absence and another.
Which of the two bites depends on the employee. Somebody on a full-time wage will hit the flat rate, because 80% of their earnings is well above it. For a part-time employee on modest hours, 80% of their average weekly earnings may be the lower figure, and that is the one to pay.
These examples show the weekly SSP rate. For an absence lasting less than a full SSP week, the amount actually payable is calculated using the employee's qualifying days.
| Average weekly earnings | 80% of earnings | Flat rate | SSP payable |
|---|---|---|---|
| £600 | £480.00 | £123.25 | £123.25 |
| £250 | £200.00 | £123.25 | £123.25 |
| £150 | £120.00 | £123.25 | £120.00 |
| £90 | £72.00 | £123.25 | £72.00 |
The bottom row is the one that could not have happened before. On £90 a week that employee sat below the old £125 floor and received nothing at all, and now receives £72. The £150 row is a different case and the easier one to get wrong, because that employee was above the old floor and did qualify before. What changed for them is not whether they get SSP but how much: it is now the earnings-linked figure rather than the flat rate. A payroll set up to pay a single fixed weekly amount to anybody off sick will overpay both of them.
There is no general scheme for reclaiming SSP from HMRC, so this lands on the employer. The government's own estimate of the additional cost across all employers is around £450 million a year.
A national figure is not much use for deciding anything, so the useful version is your own. For a rough budget estimate, review previous short-term sickness absences and identify qualifying days that may now attract SSP under the new rules, then calculate the likely cost using the employee's applicable SSP rate and qualifying-day pattern. Transitional or unusual cases should be checked separately. For an office of four with low absence it will be a rounding error. For a care provider with thirty staff and a normal amount of winter illness, it will not be.
An absence that started before 6 April 2026 and carried on past it is not simply converted onto the new rules, and this is the one area where a rule of thumb will let you down. HMRC publishes guidance specifically for absences that straddle the date, and the position can turn on when the absence began, whether there were breaks in it, and how long any fresh absence lasted.
If you have somebody who was already off sick in the spring, that is worth checking against HMRC's own guidance rather than reasoning from the headline change, because the headline change is not what governs it.
This is mostly behind us now, five months on, but it still matters for two reasons: long-term absences that began in early 2026 may still be running, and any correction to a payroll from that period has to be worked out on the rules that applied to the absence rather than the rules in force when the correction is made.
Four, in rough order of how often they turn up.
If you run your own payroll, the first two are worth checking this week against a real payslip from since April rather than against your software's settings screen. Settings say what was configured. A payslip says what happened.
If Tickdoc runs your payroll, the 2026 SSP rules are reflected in our payroll processing. If you have an unusual absence or need a historical SSP calculation checked, please contact us. If you run the payroll yourself and want a second pair of eyes on one month's figures, that is a short job and a sensible one.
The reforms came into force on 6 April 2026. Absences starting from that date use the new rules, while transitional rules can also affect some absences that began before 6 April. Statutory Sick Pay can now be payable from the first full qualifying day of sickness absence rather than after three waiting days.
For the 2026/27 tax year the standard weekly SSP rate is £123.25, and the amount payable is that figure or 80% of the employee's average weekly earnings, whichever is lower. For a lower-paid employee the 80% figure can be the smaller of the two, which is why the calculation has to be run rather than assumed. SSP can normally be paid for up to 28 weeks, subject to the eligibility rules.
Yes. Employees who earn below what used to be the lower earnings limit can now qualify, which brings a group of part-time and lower-paid staff into scope who previously received nothing. The government estimated around 1.3 million workers were in that position.
For absences beginning on or after 6 April 2026, yes, subject to the normal qualifying conditions. The day-four start no longer applies, so a two-day absence that would previously have cost nothing in statutory sick pay may now carry a liability.
The rules that apply depend on when the absence started rather than when it ended, but an absence that began before 6 April 2026 is not simply left on the old rules either. Transitional rules apply, and the position can turn on when the absence began, whether there were breaks in it and how long any fresh absence lasted. HMRC publishes specific guidance for absences that straddle the date, and that is what to check rather than reasoning from the headline change.
There is no general reclaim scheme in place. Statutory sick pay is an employer cost, which is why the removal of the waiting days is a real change to the wage bill in sectors with regular short absences rather than an administrative adjustment.
It can. Employment status and the normal qualifying conditions still matter, but the removal of the earnings floor means low earnings alone no longer rule someone out. Whether a particular worker qualifies depends on the circumstances and is worth checking rather than assuming.
Employers should keep sufficient payroll and sickness records to support SSP entitlement and payments, and HMRC may ask to see these records if there is a dispute. PAYE records, including employee leave and sickness absences, normally need to be kept for three years from the end of the tax year they relate to. For SSP it is sensible to retain the absence dates, the qualifying days, the average weekly earnings and the calculation used.
Every figure on this page was checked against the sources above on . Rates and thresholds change. If you are reading this long afterwards, check the current position before you act on it.
If you would like us to check an SSP calculation or take care of your ongoing payroll, get in touch. Tickdoc provides payroll support for small employers, including statutory pay calculations and workplace pension administration.
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