The Employment Rights Act 2025 brought the most significant rewrite of Statutory Sick Pay rules in a generation, effective 6 April 2026. The three-day waiting period that once absorbed short absences without payment is gone, the Lower Earnings Limit (previously around £125 a week) has been scrapped entirely, and ACAS (the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service) estimates that roughly 1.3 million low-paid workers who were previously locked out of SSP are now covered. For part-time workers and those on low-hours contracts, the change is concrete: a day off sick is now a paid day, not an unpaid one.

The UK Government's own economic analysis of the Act puts the aggregate addition to employer costs at approximately £450 million a year, averaging around £15 per employee across the workforce as a whole - but that average is heavily skewed. Retail, hospitality, facilities management and social care absorb a disproportionate share because short-duration absences (one and two days) make up a larger proportion of their absence profiles, and those were exactly the absences the old waiting-day rule absorbed at no cost.

The reform lands against a backdrop of rising absence. The CIPD (Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development) Health and Wellbeing at Work survey published in September 2025 put average UK employee absence at 9.4 days per person per year, up from 7.8 days in 2023 and 5.8 days in 2022 - nearly double the 2022 baseline in four years. Public sector absence sits at 13.3 days against 9.1 days in the private sector. The ONS (Office for National Statistics) Labour Force Survey records a UK sickness absence rate of 2.0% for 2025, with 148.8 million working days lost. Whatever the causes of that trend, the baseline is materially higher than it was when most HR policies were last written.

What changed on 6 April 2026

Three provisions under the Employment Rights Act 2025 are now live:

• Day-one payment. SSP is payable from the first qualifying day of absence. The old rule that triggered payment only from day four - leaving three waiting days unpaid - has been abolished.
• Lower Earnings Limit removed. The previous earnings floor of approximately £125 a week has been scrapped. Workers on part-time hours, low-hours contracts, or multiple small jobs who fell below it are now eligible. ACAS puts the newly in-scope cohort at around 1.3 million people.
• 2026/27 rate. SSP for the current tax year is £123.25 a week, or 80% of the employee's average weekly earnings if that figure is the lower of the two - per GOV.UK. The 80% limb is the operative one for most of the newly eligible cohort, whose weekly pay typically sits well below the flat rate.

Fit notes have also been reformed, though this pre-dates the Act. Since 1 July 2022, a fit note (formally a statement of fitness for work) can be issued by five categories of registered healthcare professional: doctors, registered nurses, occupational therapists, pharmacists and physiotherapists. It can follow a phone or video consultation rather than requiring a face-to-face appointment, a change that materially reduces the practical barrier to obtaining documentation.

For employees

If you work in the UK and have to take time off sick, here is what the 6 April 2026 changes mean for you in practice.

Day one is now a paid day. There is no longer a three-day period at the start of any absence where SSP simply does not apply. From the first qualifying day of sickness, if you are eligible, payment runs. The qualifying conditions still apply - you need to be classed as an employee or worker, you need to be sick, and the absence needs to meet the minimum duration - but the waiting days no longer sit between you and your entitlement.

The earnings gate has gone. Under the old rules, earning below roughly £125 a week meant SSP was unavailable regardless of any other factor. That threshold has been removed. Workers on part-time or low-hours contracts, those in second jobs, and those in sectors like retail and hospitality where contracted hours vary are now covered. Around 1.3 million workers who would previously have received nothing are now in scope.

What you actually receive. The 2026/27 SSP rate is £123.25 a week. If 80% of your average weekly earnings is lower than that, you receive the 80% figure instead. For someone whose average weekly pay is £100, that is £80 a week rather than nothing - the practical difference the reform makes for low-paid workers at the sharper end of the cohort.

Getting a fit note is more straightforward. You can now obtain one from a doctor, a registered nurse, an occupational therapist, a pharmacist or a physiotherapist, and the consultation can take place by phone or video rather than in person. If your employer's policy or a manager's script still refers to the old rules - three unpaid waiting days, a £125 earnings threshold - that information is out of date as of 6 April 2026. If something does not add up on your payslip, ACAS provides a free, independent first point of contact before any formal dispute process.

For HR and payroll

For HR and payroll teams, the reforms under the Employment Rights Act 2025 create a narrow window in which to complete what amounts to a compliance audit. The risk is not abstract: underpaying SSP - by applying the old waiting-day rule or the old LEL filter - exposes organisations to employment tribunal claims without the protection of having made a good-faith administrative error, because the statutory position has been clear since 6 April 2026.

1. Payroll system configuration

The single fastest way to concentrate liability is a payroll engine that still holds a £125-a-week eligibility gate or a day-four trigger. Ask your payroll provider to confirm in writing both the version number of any update applied and its effective date. HMRC (His Majesty's Revenue and Customs) administers SSP compliance and can recover underpayments through its enforcement powers, so a written audit trail from your provider is the minimum evidential baseline worth holding. Part-time workers earning below the old LEL threshold should be cross-checked on your payroll system immediately - if the exclusion filter has not been removed, every one of them is currently being underpaid.

2. Manager communication and handbook wording

Line managers in retail, hospitality and facilities management are often the first point of contact when someone reports sick. If the script they are working from still states that the first three days are unpaid, or that a worker needs to earn over £125 to qualify, you have a training gap that will surface at tribunal before it surfaces at HR. The CIPD's annual Reward Management data consistently shows that absence management breakdowns in frontline sectors trace back to manager-level communication failures rather than policy design. Rewrite the phone script, the intranet FAQ, and any printed absence guidance. Send a short written confirmation to every line manager setting out the new position.

3. Fit note acceptance policy

Since 1 July 2022, fit notes from physiotherapists and from remote consultations have been legally valid. If your HR policy or your managers' practice still rejects a fit note on either of those grounds, the policy is wrong and needs immediate correction. This is a lower-profile compliance risk than the payroll settings, but it carries its own tribunal exposure under the Employment Rights Act 1996, specifically provisions governing access to statutory rights, as well as potential Equality Act 2010 implications where the condition requiring medical evidence has a disparate impact on particular groups.

4. Sector-specific cost modelling

The £15-per-employee average the Government's analysis produces obscures a wide distribution. Organisations running rotas across retail, hospitality or facilities management should model their own cost exposure against their actual absence profile rather than the national aggregate. A workforce with a high proportion of one- and two-day absences will experience the cost impact more sharply than the aggregate suggests, because the three waiting-day exclusion previously absorbed the majority of exactly that pattern. A rota-based workforce of 500 with above-average short-duration absence could face cost increases several times higher than the national per-employee average implies.

One forward-looking signal worth tracking: on 20 May 2026, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) announced a fit note reform pilot, providing up to 100,000 appointments backed by £3 million in funding across four NHS WorkWell sites in Birmingham and Solihull, Coventry and Warwickshire, Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, and Lancashire and South Cumbria. The direction of travel is toward structured return-to-work support as a standard component of absence management, rather than a supplementary option. HR teams that build return-to-work conversations into absence procedures now will be better positioned when that model becomes the norm rather than the exception.

Key takeaways

• The Employment Rights Act 2025 abolished the three-day SSP waiting period with effect from 6 April 2026. Day one of a qualifying absence is now a paid day.
• The Lower Earnings Limit of approximately £125 a week has been scrapped. Around 1.3 million previously ineligible low-paid workers are now in scope, per ACAS.
• The 2026/27 SSP rate is £123.25 a week, or 80% of average weekly earnings if lower - per GOV.UK.
• UK Government analysis puts the aggregate employer cost at approximately £450 million a year, around £15 per employee on average, concentrated in retail, hospitality, facilities and care.
• CIPD data shows UK average absence at 9.4 days per employee per year as of September 2025 - substantially above the 2022 baseline most policies were written against.
• Payroll configuration, manager scripts, handbook wording, and fit note policy all require auditing. HMRC enforces SSP compliance; the difference between what your systems do and what the statute requires from 6 April 2026 is the tribunal exposure.
• Fit notes are valid from five categories of registered healthcare professional and can follow remote consultations. Policies that pre-date July 2022 on this point are doubly out of date.