Sick pay
Statutory Sick Pay calculator for the new day-one rules
Your average earnings, the days you normally work and the dates you were off: the calculator pays every qualifying day and shows each pay week.
Checked by Radif Partners · Editorial policy · Method and sources
Statutory Sick Pay for any spell of sickness that starts on or after 6 April 2026 is paid from the first day you would have worked, with no waiting days and no minimum earnings. The weekly rate is £123.25 or 80% of your normal weekly earnings, whichever is lower, so anyone earning less than about £154.06 a week receives 80% of their pay. That weekly rate is divided by the number of days you normally work to give a daily rate, cut at four decimal places, and each week’s payment is rounded up to the penny, exactly as in HMRC’s tables. Your employer pays it through payroll for up to 28 weeks, counting together spells that are no more than 8 weeks apart. The same rules apply in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and income tax and National Insurance are deducted from SSP as from wages.
Statutory Sick Pay for 10 qualifying days
£246.50
Weekly rate £123.25: the flat rate; £24.6500 a day
| Week ending 17 October 2026 (5 days) | £123.25 |
| Week ending 24 October 2026 (5 days) | £123.25 |
| Days left of the 28-week limit | 130 of 140 |
Paid from the first day you would have worked, with no waiting days (Employment Rights Act 2025, in force 6 April 2026, Great Britain and Northern Ireland). Off more than 7 days in a row: your employer can ask for a fit note.
Reading the result
The large figure is the SSP owed for the dates you entered. Each line below is a pay week ending on a Saturday, because SSP is worked out in weeks that run Sunday to Saturday; if your payroll runs monthly, your employer adds the weeks that fall in the month. With the example already filled in, a Monday-to-Friday employee earning £480 a week and off from 12 to 23 October 2026, the calculator pays 10 days and gives £246.50: two full weeks at the flat rate. The line “days left” counts what remains of the 28 weeks, expressed in your own qualifying days, which matters when another spell follows within 8 weeks.
Try a lower wage to see the 80% rule. A cleaner on three mornings a week earning £120 and off from Monday 2 to Wednesday 4 November 2026 receives £96.00: 80% of £120 is £96, divided by three days. Under the rules in force until April 2026 the same absence paid nothing at all, as the comparison of the old and new rules shows.
What it assumes
You are an employee or an agency worker on the payroll, you were too ill to work on full days (a day on which you did any work does not count), and you told your employer on time. The calculator does not apply the exclusions: SSP is not paid while you receive Statutory Maternity Pay or Maternity Allowance, nor in the four weeks before the week your baby is due if the absence is pregnancy-related, nor once 28 weeks have been paid in a linked period or a chain of linked spells has lasted three years. Linked periods explains the counting, and company sick pay what changes when your contract pays more.