The Employment Rights Act 2025 is now in force, and changes to SSP requires a specific update to your sickness absence policy.
Two things have changed. First, the lower earnings limit for Statutory Sick Pay has been abolished. Workers who previously earned below approximately £123 a week were not entitled to SSP at all. From April 2026, every employee is entitled to SSP regardless of what they earn. If you employ part-time or low-paid workers, you now have SSP obligations you didn’t have before.
Second, and affecting every employer: the three waiting days have been removed. SSP was previously not payable until the fourth day of absence. It is now payable from day one. Every episode of short-term sickness absence, across your entire workforce, now triggers a payment obligation from the very first day.
The immediate consequence: any sickness absence policy which references waiting days is now inaccurate. A policy containing incorrect information about employee entitlements creates risk.
Beyond the policy update, the removal of waiting days changes the economics of short-term absence management. Managers who previously took a relaxed approach to one or two day absences – in part because there was no payment obligation – now need to understand that every absence costs money from day one. Return-to-work procedures, trigger points, and manager conversations around patterns of short-term absence all need revisiting.
10 April 2026