SSP changes from April 2026: what small businesses need to know

What changed to SSP on 6 April 2026?

The Employment Rights Act reforms rewrote three of the oldest rules in Statutory Sick Pay. From 6 April 2026:

The official detail sits on business.gov.uk's employment changes pages. Two things did not change: SSP is still payable for up to 28 weeks per period of incapacity, and employers still cannot reclaim SSP from HMRC - the cost sits entirely with the business.

How do the old and new SSP rules compare?

How is the new SSP rate calculated?

Take 80% of the employee's average weekly earnings, compare it with £123.25, and pay the lower of the two. Two quick examples:

• Priya earns £120 a week in a part-time role. Under the old rules she was below the Lower Earnings Limit and got no SSP at all. Now she qualifies from day one at 80% of her earnings: £96 a week.
• Dev earns £600 a week. 80% of £600 is £480, so the cap applies and he receives £123.25 a week - but now from his first day off, not his fourth.

For the employee, the 80% taper means lower earners no longer fall off a cliff-edge; for the employer, the cap means the maximum weekly bill is known in advance.

What does day-one SSP cost a small business?

The honest answer: short absences, which used to cost you nothing in SSP, now cost real money. Take a team member at the £123.25 cap who works five qualifying days a week - each sick day is worth roughly £123.25 ÷ 5 = £24.65.

• A single "off Monday, back Wednesday" absence used to fall entirely inside the unpaid waiting days: SSP cost £0. The same two-day absence now costs about £49.30.
• Across a small team, five two-day absences in a year used to cost £0 in SSP. Now that pattern costs around £246.50 - none of it reclaimable from HMRC.

These are not ruinous sums, but they are no longer invisible ones. To model your own team's numbers, try our SSP cost calculator.

What do the changes mean for absence patterns?

Under the old rules, a one- or two-day absence generated no SSP and often no paperwork, so many small businesses simply didn't record them properly. That's now a payroll error waiting to happen: every absence has a cost from its first day, and you can only pay SSP correctly if you know exactly when each absence started and ended.

It also changes the economics of frequent short absence. Patterns that used to be a scheduling nuisance are now a measurable cost, which makes fair, consistent tracking - for example a Bradford Factor score (or work out a score with the Bradford Factor calculator) used as a conversation prompt, never an automatic trigger - more useful than ever. The flip side matters too: day-one pay removes the pressure on unwell employees to drag themselves in for the first three days, which is better for everyone's health and for yours as an employer.

What should small businesses do now?

1. Update your sickness policy. Remove any mention of waiting days or the Lower Earnings Limit, and state the new lower-of £123.25 or 80% rate.
2. Check payroll. Confirm your payroll software applies day-one SSP and the new rate formula, including for part-timers who previously didn't qualify.
3. Record every absence from day one. Log the first and last day of each spell, however short - it now drives pay, not just planning.
4. Review your trigger points. If your policy uses absence triggers or scores, sanity-check them against the new cost reality and apply them consistently and fairly - Acas's absence guidance is a good benchmark.
5. Keep self-certification simple. Employees can still self-certify for up to 7 calendar days, with a fit note only from day 8 - our guide to the 7-day self-certification rule covers it.
6. Watch holiday interaction. Workers who couldn't take statutory holiday because of sickness can carry it over for up to 18 months from the end of the leave year in which it accrued - see our annual leave guide and gov.uk.

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