Sick pay now starts on day one. Below £154 a week you get 80% of pay.

Statutory sick pay changed on 6 April 2026, and by the employers’ own account many of them went into it short of preparation time. It now runs from the first day of illness rather than the fourth, and anyone averaging under £154.06 a week is paid 80% of their own earnings instead of the flat rate. Research for GRiD, the group risk industry body, published on 31 March 2026, found 67% of employers would have preferred more notice of the change. Eighteen per cent expected it to be a significant challenge to their business within twelve months, rising to 24% among employers with more than 250 staff. The survey reached 500 HR decision-makers in January 2026, before any of it took effect. If your employer was one of them, the person who has to check is you.

What you are actually paid

Two things went at once. The three unpaid waiting days are gone, so sick pay starts on the first qualifying day of the absence. And the earnings floor of £125 a week is gone, which brings in up to 1.3 million people on low wages who previously got nothing at all.

What replaced the floor is the part that gets misread. You are paid the lower of £123.25 a week or 80% of your average weekly earnings across the eight weeks before the absence began. For most people £123.25 is the lower of the two, and that is what they get. Below £154.06 a week it is not — 80% of your own pay is the smaller figure, and that is what lands.

Someone averaging £80 a week is now paid £64.00; someone averaging £120 a week is paid £96.00. Both of them got nothing at all before April.

Average weekly pay	Statutory sick pay now	Before 6 April 2026
£80	£64.00 a week	Nothing — under the earnings floor
£120	£96.00 a week	Nothing — under the earnings floor
More than £154.06	£123.25 a week	£118.75, and not until day four

If you have not been in the job eight weeks, that is not a reason to be paid nothing: your employer still has to work out a figure.

The three-day absence that used to pay nothing

Sick pay is worked out per qualifying day — the days you would normally have worked. The weekly figure is divided by the number of qualifying days in that week, with no rounding, so someone on a five-day week gets a fifth of it for each day off.

So three days off sick, for a five-day worker averaging more than £154.06 a week, is £24.65 a day and £73.95 in all. Before April that absence paid nothing, because sick pay did not begin until the fourth day.

Statutory sick pay runs for up to 28 weeks in one period of sickness, or in a linked series of them.

If your employer has not caught up

Most NHS and council staff on Agenda for Change or NJC terms have occupational sick pay that pays considerably more than this, and the statutory figure sits underneath it rather than beside it. The people this change actually moves are the ones with no occupational scheme, or a short one: bank and agency staff, casual and low-hours workers, and anyone in the first months of a job.

Two things to look for on a payslip after a recent absence. Whether the first three days were paid at all. And, if your pay is low, whether the figure is 80% of your own average earnings rather than a flat rate or a blank.

If you are on NHS terms and want to know what your occupational entitlement is before you compare, our NHS sick pay page sets out the full-pay and half-pay periods, and the rolling twelve months they are counted over.

Where these figures come from

• Statutory sick pay changes 2026 — Acas
• Statutory sick pay — Acas
• 67% of employers say they needed more notice before the changes to Statutory Sick Pay — HR News
• Statutory Sick Pay Reforms: What Changes in April 2026 — FCSA
• Work out your employee's Statutory Sick Pay manually — GOV.UK
• Statutory Sick Pay: What you'll get — GOV.UK
• Changes to sick pay will help people stay in work and grow economy — GOV.UK

Every figure traces to a dated document — the line this section is named after. If one here is wrong, tell us and it gets fixed publicly. Work out your own figures.