UK Statutory Sick Pay Calculator

From 6 April 2026, Statutory Sick Pay is £123.25 a week, or 80% of your average weekly earnings if that’s less. Anyone earning more than about £154 a week gets the full £123.25. It’s paid for the days you’d normally work, for up to 28 weeks, and it’s taxed like the rest of your pay.

Two things. SSP is now paid from your first full day off sick: before, the first three working days, the “waiting days”, were unpaid. And there’s no minimum any more: before, you got nothing if your average earnings were under £125 a week. Lower earners now get 80% of their earnings instead. For a week off on a five-day week, that means a full week’s SSP instead of two days’ worth.

From your first full working day off sick. If you start work and then go home ill, even after a few minutes, that day doesn’t count. Days you wouldn’t normally work, such as weekends for most people, aren’t paid.

The weekly rate is divided by the number of days you normally work in a week. On £123.25 and a five-day week that’s £24.65 a day; on a six-day week it’s £20.54. A full week off is simply paid at the weekly rate.

Up to 28 weeks. Absences that are 8 weeks or less apart are linked, and count as one, so their weeks add up towards the 28. When your SSP is about to end, your employer gives you form SSP1, which you can use to claim benefits such as Universal Credit or Employment and Support Allowance.

Not for the first 7 days in a row, counting days you don’t work: you can tell your employer yourself. After that, your employer can ask for a fit note, which a GP, nurse, pharmacist or other healthcare professional can give you.

Yes. It’s paid through payroll like your normal pay, with Income Tax and National Insurance taken off as usual. The PAYE calculator shows what your normal pay leaves after tax.

Your employer can pay you more than SSP, but never less. Company sick pay usually includes the SSP you’re due rather than adding it on top, so check your contract or staff handbook for how much you get and for how long.

Yes. If you have more than one employer, you may get SSP from each of them, each worked out on the pay from that job. Enter each job separately to see what each one pays.

You need to be an employee, though agency workers may be entitled too. You can’t get SSP while you’re getting Statutory Maternity Pay or Maternity Allowance, once you’ve had 28 weeks of it, or if you got Employment and Support Allowance in the 85 days before. Self-employed people don’t get SSP, but may be able to claim Universal Credit or Employment and Support Allowance.

This calculator uses the rules for England, Scotland and Wales. Northern Ireland has its own sick pay law, so check nidirect for the rules that apply there.

It takes your average pay as you give it, rather than working it out from your payslips, and it doesn’t cover company sick pay, absences that started before 6 April 2026, or the special rules for agency workers, directors and term-time staff. For an absence linked to an earlier one, your rate is fixed by the first absence in the series, which may be different from today’s pay.