Statutory sick pay 2026: the new rules for shift and zero-hours staff

Most guidance on the April 2026 sick pay reforms stops after three bullet points: sick pay from day one, no earnings threshold, a new percentage rate. That summary is correct and it is not enough to run a payroll on. If your staff work variable hours, the reforms hand you two questions the summaries skip. Which days count as qualifying days when someone has no fixed pattern? And what are their average weekly earnings when half the weeks in the reference period contain no shifts at all?

Get either wrong and the payment is wrong, in a system that now starts paying on day one of every absence.

This guide covers Great Britain as at 18 August 2026. Northern Ireland is aligned on these changes, which we explain below.

The quick answer

From 6 April 2026, Statutory Sick Pay is payable from the first full day of sickness absence, and there is no longer any minimum earnings requirement. The weekly rate is £123.25 or 80% of the employee’s average weekly earnings, whichever is lower, for up to 28 weeks. The daily amount is that weekly rate divided by the number of qualifying days in the week. For staff with no fixed working pattern, the employer and the worker should agree in writing which days are qualifying days, because the statutory fallback can otherwise make every day of the week a qualifying day.

What changed on 6 April 2026

Three things changed, and one of them is widely misread.

The Employment Rights Act 2025 made the changes, and the Employment Rights Act 2025 (Commencement No. 3 and Transitional Provisions) Regulations 2026 (SI 2026/373) brought them into force on 6 April 2026. Section 10 removed the waiting period in Great Britain. Section 11 dealt with the lower earnings limit and the rate. Sections 12 and 13 did the same for Northern Ireland, commenced by the same instrument on the same day, so there is no divergence in timing between the two jurisdictions on these measures.

Waiting days are gone. Section 10 removed section 155(1) of the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992, the provision that barred payment for the first three qualifying days. It also shortened the period of incapacity for work: where it once took four or more consecutive days of sickness before SSP could arise, a single day now does it. That second change is the one that bites hardest on shift work, because a one-shift absence is now inside the system.

The earnings threshold is gone. Section 11(3) removed paragraph 2(c) of Schedule 11 to the 1992 Act, which had blocked entitlement for anyone earning below the lower earnings limit. The limit itself still exists for National Insurance, at £129 a week for 2026/27, but it no longer decides who gets sick pay.

The rate is now a ceiling, not a flat payment. This is the misread. Section 11(2) rewrote the rate provision so that the weekly rate is the lower of a cash figure and 80% of the employee’s normal weekly earnings. The Act was written with £118.75 in it, the 2025/26 figure, and the Social Security Benefits Up-rating Order 2026 (SI 2026/148) substituted £123.25 at one minute past midnight on the same morning the reform commenced.

What did not change: SSP is still paid by the employer, still runs through payroll as taxable and NICable pay on the normal payday, and is still capped at 28 weeks.

Why £123.25 is a maximum, not an entitlement

Read the rate as “whichever is lower” and the consequence follows. A worker only reaches £123.25 once 80% of their average weekly earnings exceeds it, which happens at about £154 a week. Below that, they get 80% of what they earn.

GOV.UK’s own worked examples make the point. An employee averaging £185 a week gets the flat £123.25, because 80% of £185 is £148 and the cash figure is lower. An employee averaging £145 a week gets £116, because 80% of £145 is lower than £123.25. On four qualifying days that is £29 a day.

So a part-time worker on £145 a week does not receive the headline rate. Some workers who were entitled before April 2026 now receive less per week than they would have under the old flat rate. The Department for Business and Trade acknowledged as much in its Statutory Sick Pay factsheet, which argues that removing waiting days leaves almost everyone better off across a whole absence: no employee is entitled to less SSP over the first three weeks of an absence, and the factsheet cites the DWP Employee Survey 2023 as estimating that three-week window covers 87% of all sickness absences.

For payroll, the practical instruction is that you cannot hardcode £123.25. Every SSP calculation now needs an average weekly earnings figure first.

Qualifying days: the decision that drives everything else

Qualifying days are the only days SSP can be paid for, and the daily amount comes straight from them. Section 157(3) of the 1992 Act fixes the daily amount as the weekly rate divided by the number of qualifying days in that week, and the week runs from Sunday.

That division is why qualifying days matter more than anything else in an irregular-hours calculation. The same weekly entitlement split across two qualifying days pays a much larger daily figure than the same entitlement split across six.

HMRC’s guidance is that qualifying days are normally the days someone is required to work under their contract, that they must be agreed between employer and employee, and that there must be at least one in every week. Bank holidays do not interrupt the pattern.

Then comes the part almost nobody publishes. Where the parties have not agreed, regulation 5(2) of the Statutory Sick Pay (General) Regulations 1982 sets a fallback in three steps. First, the days the employer and employee agree the employee was required to work. If they agree there was no such day, the qualifying day is a Wednesday. And if there is no agreement of the first kind at all, then every day of the week is a qualifying day, except any day both sides agree none of that employer’s staff work.

Read that last limb carefully, because it is the trap. An employer who never got round to agreeing qualifying days with its casual staff can find that all seven days count. That inflates the number of days an absence touches, and with day-one payment there is no longer a three-day buffer absorbing the difference.

The fix costs nothing. Agree qualifying days in writing when someone joins, record them against the payroll record, and revisit them if the pattern settles into something different. For a worker whose shifts genuinely move around, agreeing a fixed set of qualifying days each week is both permitted and far easier to administer than reconstructing a rota retrospectively.

Average weekly earnings when the hours move

The second half of the calculation is the one even the better commercial guides tend to skip, some of them openly. Four rules do most of the work.

The relevant period is anchored to pay days, not to the calendar. Regulation 19(3) of the 1982 Regulations, as set out in HMRC’s manual, runs the period from the day after the last normal pay day falling at least eight weeks before, up to the last normal pay day before the period of incapacity started. It is not the eight calendar weeks before the first sick day. Teams that count back eight weeks from the absence get a different, wrong answer, and this is the single most common variable-hours error.

Weeks with no earnings count as zero, they are not skipped. Every payment made in the relevant period goes in, even where it relates to work done outside that period, and empty weeks stay in the divisor. For a zero-hours worker who had shifts in three weeks out of eight, the average is spread across all eight. That is what the rules require, and it is also why SSP for casual staff so often lands lower than either side expects.

Only Class 1 earnings count. The test is whether the payment is subject to Class 1 National Insurance, or would be if it were high enough. Benefits attracting Class 1A, PAYE Settlement Agreement payments and tax credits are out. This matters in hospitality: where tips run through a tronc and the employer is neither the source of the payment nor the person who allocates it, HMRC treats the payment as outside Class 1 National Insurance. Those tips therefore sit outside average weekly earnings too, so a waiter whose take-home is substantially tips can have a much lower SSP figure than their actual income suggests.

Short service does not disqualify anyone. GOV.UK is explicit that employees paid less than eight weeks of earnings still qualify. HMRC’s method is to use whatever has been paid and the period it represents: for someone who has had three days’ wages, divide by three and multiply by seven, whatever their contracted days. Where a new starter falls sick before any pay at all, the calculation comes off the contractual entitlement.

One more detail worth setting correctly in software: average weekly earnings are not rounded, while the SSP payment itself is rounded up to the next whole penny. Mixing the two rules up produces small, persistent discrepancies.

Putting it together

Here is a Wagecrew illustration of the two halves meeting, using a pattern common in hospitality and care.

A bar supervisor works variable shifts. Over the relevant period, from the day after the pay day at least eight weeks before to the last pay day before she goes off sick, she was paid £1,120 across eight weeks, including two weeks with no shifts at all. Her average weekly earnings are £140.

Because 80% of £140 is £112, and £112 is lower than £123.25, her weekly SSP is £112.

She and her employer agreed at induction that her qualifying days are Thursday to Sunday, four days. Her daily rate is £112 divided by 4, which is £28. She is off sick for the Friday and Saturday of one week, so she receives £56, payable from the first day because waiting days no longer apply.

Had the same employer never agreed qualifying days with her, the fallback could have made all seven days qualifying. Her daily rate would then be £112 divided by 7, which is £16. The two-day absence would pay £32 rather than £56, for the same worker, the same earnings and the same illness. The agreement is doing real work.

Who still cannot get SSP

Removing the earnings threshold did not remove everything else. Paragraph 2 of Schedule 11 to the 1992 Act still blocks a period of entitlement in several situations, and two of them catch casual staff regularly.

Entitlement does not arise where the employee has done no work at all under the contract. Signing a zero-hours contract is not enough on its own. It also does not arise where the employee had at least one day of entitlement to Employment and Support Allowance in the 85 days before, or to incapacity benefit in the 57 days before, nor during a stoppage from a trade dispute, nor in a pregnancy disqualifying period.

Casual and zero-hours staff face one further distinction that GOV.UK sets out directly. Once someone has three months’ continuous employment, their contract is treated as indefinite for SSP purposes and entitlement continues through the whole absence. Below three months, entitlement runs only to the end of the period they had agreed to work. Periods of sickness, annual leave and spells when no work was offered do not break that three-month run.

For agency workers, the agency is normally the entity liable, as the secondary contributor for National Insurance. Where an agency worker has an agreed future assignment starting within eight weeks of the current one ending, entitlement arises from day one of that future assignment. Someone with two jobs can qualify separately in each, with earnings aggregated only where the employers trade in association.

There is also an anti-avoidance rule that day-one payment makes newly relevant. Under regulation 4 of the 1982 Regulations, where an employer ends a contract solely or mainly to avoid liability for SSP, the liability survives: the employer must keep paying until the period of entitlement would have ended anyway, or until the contract would have expired, whichever comes first. Declining to offer further shifts to a casual worker who has just gone sick is exactly the fact pattern that rule exists for.

Absences that straddle 6 April 2026

Long absences running across the change date follow their own rules, and GOV.UK publishes dedicated guidance on them.

Waiting days served before 6 April 2026 are not paid, and are not re-served. Where someone was part-way through them, entitlement simply starts from their first qualifying day on or after 6 April.

Someone who was ineligible before the change because they earned below the old limit can become entitled from 6 April, provided their absence began on or after 22 September 2025, or they had a break in it between then and 5 April 2026. An absence that started on or before 21 September 2025 and ran unbroken to 5 April 2026 gets nothing, because it has already used up the 28 weeks, and entitlement only returns after eight weeks back at work.

There is also a narrow rate protection. An employee whose normal weekly earnings are not less than £125 and not more than £154.05, who was already receiving SSP before 6 April 2026 and remained off sick, stays on £123.25 rather than dropping to 80% of their earnings. It protects that continuous absence only. It ends when they return to work, and it does not carry into a later linked period.

Linking is worth checking separately, because it changes the money. Periods of incapacity eight weeks or less apart are treated as one, and the average weekly earnings from the first period continue to apply. A worker whose earnings have since risen stays on the older, lower figure until the link breaks. Entitlement also ends where a continuous series of linked periods runs beyond three years.

What payroll needs to do differently

Stop keeping SSP records for their own sake, but keep the pay records. The separate duty to maintain SSP records was revoked in April 2014. What still applies is the PAYE and National Insurance duty to keep contribution records for at least three years after the end of the tax year, and HMRC can require any document relating to the calculation or payment of SSP to be produced within 30 days. Penalties reach £3,000 both for record failures and for refusing or repeatedly failing to make a statutory payment.

Do not look for a rebate. The Percentage Threshold Scheme, which once let employers recover SSP above 13% of their monthly Class 1 liability, was abolished in April 2014. SSP is reported inside normal pay and there is no SSP line to reclaim on an Employer Payment Summary, which lists only the parental statutory payments.

Send disputes to HMRC, not to the Fair Work Agency. The Fair Work Agency launched on 7 April 2026 and will eventually take on SSP, but that transfer has not happened. Employees who believe SSP has been wrongly refused still appeal to HMRC, and form SSP1 tells them how. SSP1 itself has deadlines: within seven days if someone does not qualify, within seven days if SSP ends unexpectedly mid-absence, and by the start of week 23 where SSP will end before the sickness does.

Keep the sick pay and holiday pay reference periods apart. SSP uses an eight-week relevant period anchored to pay days. Holiday pay for irregular-hours staff uses a 52-week reference period and its own accrual rules, which we cover in our guide to zero-hours contract holiday pay. They are different periods answering different questions, and treating one as the other is a recurring source of underpayments.

What it costs, and who it reaches

The same Department for Business and Trade factsheet puts the additional cost of removing waiting days and the earnings limit at £450 million a year across all employers, about £15 more per employee. It gives the reach as up to 1.3 million employees earning below the old limit gaining eligibility, and says around 25% of all employees receive only SSP during a sickness absence, with no occupational top-up.

Those averages land unevenly. The £15 figure is spread across the whole economy, and an employer whose workforce is mostly low-paid and part-time is drawing from a population where a much larger share of staff were previously ineligible and now are not. The DWP impact assessment for the measures notes likely effects on adult social care specifically, where Skills for Care data for 2022/23 indicated that around half of independent-sector employers offered occupational sick pay to their care workers, against over 90% of local authorities.

For scale on the underlying absence, ONS put the UK sickness absence rate at 2.0% in 2025, with 148.8 million working days lost and 4.4 days lost per worker, in figures released on 1 May 2026.

If you want to know what absence is costing you specifically rather than what it costs the average employer, the same method we set out for calculating staff turnover applies: measure your own rate before you act on a national one.

Where earned-wage access fits, and where it does not

Worth being precise here, because the two things get conflated. Earned-wage access does not change anyone’s sick pay entitlement, and it is not a substitute for it. SSP is a statutory payment your payroll owes; drawing earned wages early is access to money already worked for.

What the April 2026 reform does change is the shape of low-paid workers’ pay in a bad month. Day-one payment means a single missed shift now generates a payment rather than nothing, but at 80% of average weekly earnings, that payment is below normal pay for anyone under about £154 a week. For hospitality, care and agency workforces, an absence still means a smaller payslip arriving on the usual date.

Wagecrew EWA is employer-funded, and workers pay nothing to use it. It lets someone draw wages they have already earned rather than wait for payday, which addresses the timing gap between working a shift and being paid for it. It does not top up sick pay, and we would not claim it does. If you want to talk through how it works alongside your existing payroll, our employer overview sets out the mechanics, and we are happy to walk through the integration side with whoever runs your payroll.

Frequently asked questions

What is the SSP rate in 2026?

For the 2026/27 tax year, Statutory Sick Pay is £123.25 a week or 80% of the employee’s average weekly earnings, whichever is lower. Because it is the lower of the two, employees averaging less than about £154 a week receive 80% of their earnings rather than the £123.25 figure.

Is SSP paid from the first day now?

Yes. From 6 April 2026, the three waiting days were removed, so SSP is payable from the first full day of sickness absence. The period of incapacity for work was also shortened, so a single day of sickness can now create an entitlement where it previously took four consecutive days.

Do zero-hours workers get statutory sick pay?

Yes, provided they meet the ordinary conditions: they have a contract, have done some work under it, are classed as an employee for SSP purposes, and give notice of sickness. There is no longer any minimum earnings requirement. Where someone has three months’ continuous employment, entitlement continues for the whole absence; below three months it runs to the end of the period they had agreed to work.

How do you decide qualifying days for someone with no fixed pattern?

The employer and the employee should agree them, and there must be at least one in each week. If nothing is agreed, regulation 5(2) of the Statutory Sick Pay (General) Regulations 1982 applies a fallback: the days agreed as required working days, or a Wednesday where it is agreed there was no such day, or otherwise every day of the week apart from days on which none of that employer’s staff work. Agreeing qualifying days in writing avoids the last outcome.

How do you work out average weekly earnings for variable hours?

Use the relevant period, which runs from the day after the last normal pay day falling at least eight weeks before, to the last normal pay day before the sickness started. Add all earnings paid in that period that are subject to Class 1 National Insurance, including payments relating to work done outside it, then divide by the number of weeks. Weeks in which the worker earned nothing stay in the divisor. Do not round the result.

Does the lower earnings limit still exist?

It exists for National Insurance, at £129 a week for 2026/27, and it still governs other statutory payments. It no longer has any role in deciding entitlement to Statutory Sick Pay, having been removed as a qualifying condition on 6 April 2026.

Can an employer reclaim SSP from HMRC?

No. The Percentage Threshold Scheme was abolished in April 2014 and there is no replacement. SSP is paid through normal payroll as taxable, NICable pay, and it does not appear among the statutory payments that can be reclaimed on an Employer Payment Summary.

Do the 2026 changes apply in Northern Ireland?

Yes. Sections 12 and 13 of the Employment Rights Act 2025 make the equivalent changes for Northern Ireland, and the same commencement regulations brought them into force on 6 April 2026, so the timing matches Great Britain. Northern Ireland operates its own social security legislation, so check the Northern Ireland provisions where a point turns on the precise statutory wording.

Further reading and sources

• GOV.UK, Statutory Sick Pay: employer guide: entitlement, eligibility, form SSP1 and the current rate.
• GOV.UK, Work out your employee’s Statutory Sick Pay manually: the relevant period, the daily-rate method and the official worked examples at £185 and £145 average weekly earnings.
• GOV.UK, Sickness absences that start before and end on or after 6 April 2026: the transitional rules, including the 21 September 2025 cut-off and the £125 to £154.05 rate protection.
• GOV.UK, Statutory Sick Pay: how different employment types affect what you pay: agency workers, casual and zero-hours staff, the three-month rule and employees with more than one job.
• GOV.UK, Rates and thresholds for employers 2026 to 2027: the £123.25 weekly rate, the daily-rate table and the £129 lower earnings limit.
• Employment Rights Act 2025, section 10: removal of the waiting period in Great Britain, and the amendment making a single day a period of incapacity.
• Employment Rights Act 2025, section 11: the rewritten rate provision and the removal of the lower earnings limit condition.
• Employment Rights Act 2025 (Commencement No. 3 and Transitional Provisions) Regulations 2026: SI 2026/373, made 25 March 2026, commencing sections 10 to 13 on 6 April 2026, with the transitional provisions in regulations 3 to 6.
• Social Security Benefits Up-rating Order 2026: SI 2026/148, article 8, setting the weekly figure at £123.25.
• Statutory Sick Pay (General) Regulations 1982, regulation 5: the qualifying-days fallback, including the Wednesday rule and the every-day limb.
• Statutory Sick Pay (General) Regulations 1982, regulation 4: liability where a contract is ended to avoid paying SSP.
• Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992, Schedule 11: the circumstances in which a period of entitlement does not arise, including the 85-day ESA bar and the no-work-done bar.
• HMRC Statutory Payments Manual, SPM110600: qualifying days, the agreement requirement and the minimum of one per week.
• HMRC Statutory Payments Manual, SPM170200: the relevant period for average weekly earnings, anchored to pay days.
• HMRC National Insurance Manual, NIM02905: when tips and gratuities paid through a tronc fall outside Class 1 National Insurance.
• Department for Business and Trade, Statutory Sick Pay factsheet: the source for the £450 million annual cost, about £15 per employee, up to 1.3 million employees gaining eligibility, the 25% receiving only SSP, and the 87% figure attributed to the DWP Employee Survey 2023.
• DWP, Impact assessment: improve access to Statutory Sick Pay by removing the Lower Earnings Limit and removing the waiting period: the distributional analysis, including the adult social care section and the Skills for Care occupational sick pay figures.
• Acas, Statutory sick pay: plain-English guidance, including agreeing qualifying days where there is no regular pattern.
• ONS, Sickness absence in the UK labour market: the 2025 figures released on 1 May 2026: a 2.0% absence rate, 148.8 million working days lost and 4.4 days per worker.
• GOV.UK, Fair Work Agency enforcement statement: what the agency enforces now, and what transfers to it later.