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

Employee eligibility

To qualify for SSP, employees must:

• Be off work sick for 4 or more qualifying days in a row
   TIP: Qualifying days are the days an employee is absent that they'd normally work. Find out more in the holiday and absence qualifying day patterns article.
• Earn an average of at least [BCB:244:UKI Payroll LEL value:ECB]  per week
• Have an employment contract and completed some work under their contract
• Give you notice and proof of illness when needed

NOTE: Employees paid less than eight weeks of earnings still qualify for SSP. To check how much to pay them, you can use the HMRC SSP calculator. Go to gov.uk to access the calculator.

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

If your employee qualifies for SSP, the current legislation entitles them to 28 weeks at the weekly rate:

• [BCB:286:UKI Payroll Statutory sick weekly rate:ECB]

They receive SSP:

• For the days they usually work - called ‘qualifying days’
• In the same way as wages, for example on the normal payday, deducting tax and National insurance

For more information about entitlement and what to do after you pay an employee 28 weeks SSP go to gov.uk.

To view the daily rates of SSP, go to gov.uk.

Linked SSP period

If an employee returns to work after SSP, then goes onto SSP again within a certain period, it's a linked period of SSP. This occurs when the employee begins another SSP absence lasting four days or more, within eight weeks of the last period ending.

You don't need to apply waiting days to a linked period of SSP, as the employee has already served them in the initial SSP.

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

Process SSP

For help with processing SSP, follow the enter statutory sick pay (SSP) for an employee article.