How to Calculate Statutory Sick Pay in 2025/2026

The Statutory Sick Pay Rate (SSP) recently got a boost for the 2025/2026 tax year. Here’s everything you need to know about the SSP rate and how it’s calculated for employees. 

We’re all human. And that means, from time to time, that we can get sick. 

The same goes for your employees. If a staff member’s illness means they can’t come in to work, that employee might be eligible, by law, to receive sick pay in the UK. 

But what is paid sick leave in the UK, and how much time (and money) are employees entitled to?  Perhaps more pressingly, how can you calculate SSP for your staff? 

This guide provides answers to these questions and more. So, let’s dig in.

What is the Statutory Sick Pay rate?

Statutory Sick Pay (or SSP as it’s referred to) is the basic amount of pay a UK employee is entitled to when they’re absent from work due to illness or sickness. 

Be careful not to confuse SSP with Occupational Sick Pay (OSP). While SSP is a basic right for every UK employee, it’s entirely up to you as an employer if you’d also like to offer OSP. That said, we recommend that you set up an OSP scheme, as it’s generally a good idea to have one.

What are the current SSP rates in the UK for 2025/2026?

Put simply, how much SSP an employee gets in the UK depends on the number of ‘qualifying’ days they’ve worked each week. Let’s break this down: when someone is sick, their first three days of absence are known as “waiting days”. In other words, they don’t count toward SSP. After that, SSP is payable for every working day (known as qualifying days) that an employee misses due to sickness after the waiting days. From this, you can work out their daily SSP rate. 

SSP rates for the 2025/26 tax year are as follows, by the way:

Remember, as a company, you can decide to pay your employees more than the daily rate of SSP by providing additional occupational sick pay. What you mustn’t do, however, is pay lower than the basic statutory amount; otherwise, you’ll be in breach of legislation.

How much is statutory sick pay per week in the UK?

As you can see from our chart, the standard weekly rate for SSP here in the UK for the 2025/26 tax year is £118.75.

These rates change every tax year, so it’s important to keep on top of them so you don’t accidentally keep paying employees an old rate (if you’re using a platform like PayFit to run your payroll, then you don’t have to worry since rates like SSP automatically update each year).  

Who is eligible for Statutory Sick Pay?

Not every UK employee who falls sick will be entitled to sick pay. In order to be eligible to receive the SSP rate, they’ll need to meet certain criteria.

Here are the conditions that would make an employee eligible for Statutory Sick Pay in the UK:

• They must have an employment contract with your company (or, in other words, be recognised as an employee);

• They must have started working under the conditions of their employment contract;

• They must have been sick for four or more consecutive days (known as a Period of Incapacity for Work), including non-working days like weekends;

• Their income must not be less than the Lower Earning Limit (LEL), which is £123 per week for 2024/2025;

• They must notify you (and, in some cases, show proof) that they’ve been absent from work due to sickness.

In order to consider an employee’s periods of absence as “linked”, the sickness periods must either last four or more days or be at most eight weeks apart.

Who isn’t eligible for Statutory Sick Pay?

An employee isn’t entitled to SSP in the UK if:

• They’ve already received SSP for up to 28 weeks;

• They’re receiving Statutory Maternity Pay or Allowance;

• They’re pregnant and off work for any illness related to their pregnancy within four weeks before the week their baby is due;

• They spent the first day of their illness in custody or involved in a strike;

• They’re not paying National Insurance contributions because they work outside the EU;

• They already received Employment and Support Allowance within their first 12 weeks of working for you.

You’ll need to give employees who are not eligible for SSP an SSP1 Form. Employees can use this form to support their application for Universal Credit and Employment and Support Allowance.

How to calculate the UK SSP rate for your employees

You can calculate the SSP rate for your employees in two ways: manually or by using payroll software.

The formula for the manual calculation of SSP is:

Using PayFit to handle and calculate SSP

Remember when we mentioned there were two ways to calculate SSP - one being manual and the other using software? 

The latter is the more convenient way to calculate SSP in the UK and can save your team oodles of time normally wasted on painstaking manual calculations. 

Plus, payroll software like PayFit automatically tracks and applies changes to SSP rates to your payroll system. 

You can also use PayFit to calculate your employee's Statutory Sick Pay and Sickness deductions automatically when you indicate that an employee is on sick leave. Now that’s pretty handy.