The law requires you to pay SSP to all employees who are ill and qualify for sick pay.

SSP changed from 6 April 2026. Find out more about eligibility and entitlement from 6 April 2026 onwards.

Employee eligibility

To qualify for SSP, employees must:

• Have an employment contract and completed some work under their contract
• Give you notice and proof of illness when needed

If your employee is off work due to sickness and not eligible for SSP, you must issue form SSP1. To access form SSP1 and for more information about the qualifying factors, go to Gov.UK.

Entitlement

The maximum amount of SSP is 28 weeks.

The rate of SSP employees receive is the lower of either:

• The statutory weekly sick pay rate of £123.25, or
• 80% of their average weekly earnings

If 80% of an employee's average weekly earnings is below £123.25, their weekly SSP rate is below the standard rate.

Qualifying days

Employees still receive SSP for each qualifying day they're off sick that they were due to work. 

For help with calculating an employee's daily SSP rate, visit the calculate the SSP daily payment rate from 6 April 2026 article.

Linked SSP period

If an employee returns to work after SSP, then goes onto SSP again within eight weeks, it's a linked period of SSP.

When this happens, all linked periods count towards the same 28-week maximum of SSP.

When you use the SSP function in Sage 50 Payroll to process a linked period, your software automatically calculates this correctly.

If an employee takes some SSP entitlement and returns to work, the entitlement resets to 28 weeks after they've worked for eight full weeks. 

Process SSP

For help with processing SSP, follow the enter SSP for an employee article.