UK Statutory Sick Pay (SSP) Calculator

Statutory Sick Pay is the legal minimum an employer in the UK must pay an employee who is off work sick, and it comes from Part XI of the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992, put into practice by the Statutory Sick Pay (General) Regulations 1982. For decades the rules stayed fairly settled — a flat weekly rate, a minimum earnings threshold to qualify, and three unpaid 'waiting days' before payment started. From 6 April 2026, the Employment Rights Act 2025 changed all three of those pillars at once, brought into force by the Employment Rights Act 2025 (Commencement No. 3 and Transitional Provisions) Regulations 2026. This calculator uses the current, post-reform method: your average weekly earnings, your normal working days, and how many of those days you were off sick.

Three changes matter most. First, the three waiting days are gone — SSP is now due from the very first qualifying day of sickness, where it used to start on day four. Second, the Lower Earnings Limit that used to exclude low-paid workers entirely (£123 a week for 2025/26) has been abolished, so anyone classed as an employee can now qualify, whatever they earn. Third, because that earnings floor disappeared, a new formula fills the gap: your weekly SSP is the lower of the statutory flat rate — £123.25 for 2026/27, up from £116.75 the year before — or 80% of your average weekly earnings. High earners still get the full flat rate, since 80% of their pay comfortably exceeds it; it's workers on the lowest incomes, who previously got nothing at all, that the percentage rule is really aimed at.

Take someone earning £600 a week, working a standard 5-day week, off sick for 10 days. Eighty percent of £600 is £480, well above the £123.25 flat rate, so the flat rate applies. Their SSP works out at £123.25 ÷ 5 = £24.65 a day, and 10 sick days gives 10 × £24.65 = £246.50 in total. Because their earnings comfortably clear the 80% test, the flat weekly rate — the same figure everyone above a certain earnings level receives — is what actually caps their pay, exactly as it did before the 2026 reform.

Now take someone on £80 a week, working 3 days a week, off sick for 6 days — two full weeks' worth of their working pattern. Eighty percent of £80 is £64.00, below the £123.25 flat rate, so the percentage rule applies instead: £64.00 ÷ 3 = £21.33 a day, and 6 sick days gives 6 × £21.33 = £128.00. Before 6 April 2026, this same worker would have received nothing at all — their £80 sat below the old £123 Lower Earnings Limit, so they didn't qualify for SSP regardless of how many days they were off. The reform was estimated to bring roughly 1.3 million more low-paid workers like this into SSP eligibility for the first time.

'Qualifying days' are simply the days you and your employer have agreed you normally work — as few as one, or as many as seven. SSP is worked out by dividing your weekly rate by that number to get a daily rate, then paying it for each qualifying day you're off sick. Average weekly earnings are usually calculated over the 8 weeks before you fell ill. SSP is not unlimited: it stops after 28 weeks within one period of incapacity for work, a cap that predates the 2026 reform and hasn't changed.

One thing the 2026 reform didn't bring back is employer reclaim. Employers used to be able to recover some SSP costs through the Percentage Threshold Scheme, but that was abolished from 6 April 2014, so today's employers pay SSP entirely from their own funds, with no ordinary route to claim it back from HMRC. As with any statutory minimum, treat this figure as a floor: many employers run a more generous contractual or occupational sick pay scheme on top, and your contract or staff handbook is the final word on what you're actually entitled to.