Statutory sick pay, and the gap it leaves behind

Statutory sick pay is the pay your employer gives you while you're off ill. It sits inside your normal pay packet, and it's your employer who decides, against three conditions, whether you're entitled to it.

You have to be classed as an employee

Statutory sick pay comes from an employer, so to qualify you must be classed as an employee (GOV.UK, read 29 September 2026). If you work for yourself, there's no employer in the relationship to pay it, which is a different problem to work through than the one this page is about.

You have to have done some work for them

Being on the books isn't enough on its own. You need to have actually carried out some work for the employer before you fell ill.

You have to have been ill for a full working day

The illness itself has a threshold too. It has to have kept you off for at least one whole working day, so a few hours lost to a bad afternoon doesn't put you over that line.

Meet all three and your employer works out what you're owed from there. Miss one, and statutory sick pay simply isn't the mechanism that applies to you.

Statutory sick pay is not a single flat amount. The law sets two figures and pays you whichever is lower: a standard weekly rate, or 80 per cent of your normal weekly earnings. Most summaries stop at the flat rate, which is fine for anyone whose earnings sit above it, because the flat rate is the lower figure for them and so it's the only one that ever applies. For someone on lower earnings, the 80 per cent calculation can come in below the flat rate instead, and the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992, section 157, builds that comparison in.

Paid from day one, not after a wait

Where you qualify, payment runs from the first day you're off sick, and it continues for up to 28 weeks. After that, statutory sick pay stops regardless of how long you're still unable to work, which is the point at which many employees discover there's nothing behind it.

The earnings floor that used to exclude people

Before 6 April 2026, you had to earn above a set threshold even to qualify for statutory sick pay, and anyone below it got nothing from the scheme at all. That floor was removed from that date, as amended under section 157, so lower earners who were previously excluded are now covered on the same lower-of-the-two basis as everyone else.

Knowing which of the two figures applies to you is only half the picture. Working out how many weeks your own savings and outgoings would actually carry you once it runs out is the other half, and the deferred period calculator does that arithmetic on your own numbers.

No employer, no statutory sick pay

Statutory sick pay is paid by an employer to an employee. If you work for yourself, there is no employer in that arrangement, so the scheme does not reach you at all, whatever your National Insurance record or how long you have been trading.

This catches people out because statutory sick pay gets talked about as a baseline everyone can fall back on. For someone self-employed, falling ill removes the income and nothing in that particular scheme steps in to replace it.

What's there instead

Support for a self-employed person who cannot work runs through the benefits system, and what you might be entitled to depends on your National Insurance record and your circumstances.

For most self-employed households, that still leaves a gap between what the illness costs and what the state replaces. Working out the size of that gap starts with your own savings and outgoings, which is what the deferred period calculator does with your own numbers, and how insurers treat earnings that vary year to year is covered on the page about income protection when your income varies.

New Style Employment and Support Allowance sits outside the statutory sick pay system entirely, and it's the one route into state support for people statutory sick pay was never built to reach. It comes from the Department for Work and Pensions, which is why the self-employed can apply for it even though they have no employer to pay them sick pay in the first place.

Who can apply

Eligibility turns on your National Insurance record. You can apply if you've paid enough National Insurance contributions, usually in the last two to three years (GOV.UK, read 29 September 2026). That's a different test from the one statutory sick pay applies, so someone with a thin or irregular self-employed income can still qualify if their contribution record stacks up.

Why it doesn't run alongside statutory sick pay

You can't receive New Style ESA while you're being paid statutory sick pay. The two are designed to pick up where the other leaves off, so for an employee it becomes relevant once statutory sick pay has ended, and for someone self-employed it can be the first form of state support available from the start of the illness.

If you're self-employed and want to see how an insurer would treat your earnings alongside this, the page on income protection when your income varies sets out how that's worked out.

An employee off work with a long illness is usually paid in two stages, and both come to an end eventually. Many employers pay some wages for a period under their own sick pay scheme, and statutory sick pay runs alongside it or picks up once that ends. Once both are exhausted, employment income stops unless the reader is back at work.

Picture someone earning a typical salary, with a mortgage, household bills and childcare still due every month whether they are earning or not. Employer sick pay often tapers off after a set number of weeks. Once statutory sick pay also comes to an end, the household is left meeting those outgoings from savings, a partner's income or Universal Credit. For a sole earner, that shortfall is the whole of their monthly income.

What income protection would fill

Income protection pays a monthly benefit directly to the reader once an agreed deferred period has passed, a period chosen at the start of the policy. It sits alongside employer and statutory sick pay, and it keeps paying for as long as the benefit period chosen. Whether that gap is worth insuring against depends on the savings and other income a household already has to fall back on, which you can work out against your own outgoings and sick pay, or size the monthly benefit against your earnings.