Statutory Sick Pay (SSP) changes on 6th April 2026 as a result of the Employment Rights Act.
More employees will now qualify for Sick Pay SSP as a result of:
- The Period of Incapacity for Work (PIW) being reduced from 4 calendar days to 1
- The number of initial Qualifying Days (QD) which act as unpaid Waiting Days (WD) being reduced from 3 to zero.
What about zero hours workers or irregular working
Many employers have been able to avoid paying SSP to some worker groups due to former SSP rules which end on 5th April 2026, namely:
- Average weekly earnings were below £125 per week equals no SSP
- Using one qualifying day only for irregular or zero hours workers meant that sickness absence of 4 weeks was needed for SSP to start payment.
Many casual or zero hours workers in these circumstances would either not qualify due to low earnings, or were not sick long enough for SSP to kick in even if their earnings did qualify them.
But from 6th April 2026 with the Lower Earnings Limit or SSP earnings threshold being removed and the application of a new 80% average weekly earnings SSP rate subject to a maximum of £123.25, these casual or zero hours workers now qualify for SSP each and every week.
Qualifying days
What hasn’t changed as part of the Employments Right Act are the rules on employers agreeing qualifying days (QD).
However, employers may need to consider what QDs are applied now, and what to agree to apply in the future.
These are the only days that you pay SSP for.
They are the days that the employee normally works (their contracted working days). An employer can decide to not use contracted working days, for example if the employee works a varied or alternative working pattern each week.
An employer must agree which days will be qualifying days with their employee.
If there is no agreement the qualifying days can be one of the following:
- the days which are required to be worked under their contract
- a Wednesday, if there is no named day of work
- every day of the week except those when none of the workforce are required to work
What if they are not due to work at all?
The challenge here is that there must be at least one QD each calendar week. If there is no agreement on what day that is, then it is Wednesday.
So even for a zero hours worker there is at least one qualifying day in the week they do no work, and if sick on that day they are due a payment of SSP.
If there is only 1 QD then sickness on that day results in 1 full week SSP.
If 2 QD then each QD of sickness result in a half week SSP payment.
If 3 QD then each day is a third.
If 4 QD then each day is a quarter.
If 5 QD then each day is a fifth and so on to 7 QDs resulting in a day being a seventh.
The fact that an employee was not due to work on those QDs has limited to no relevance. All that is needed to qualify for the SSP is sickness on those days by that employee worker.
Should employers review QDs?
It’s not a requirement of the new legislation to do so, the law has not changed on the definition of QDs. However, employers may want to review their circumstances and the workforce types they employ. So a review may be worthwhile even if the decision is to maintain the status quo.
Sickness on a QD equals Statutory Sick Pay (SSP)
An employer may take the view that they set QDs to be their opening days for work. Then any day of absence is the relevant division of the weekly SSP. Else they find that to obtain a full weeks SSP, all you have to do is be sick on Wednesday.
PAYadvice.UK 26/3/2026