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Pay this worker £123.25 for one sick day. Pay this one £24.65. Both are correct.

ended 19. July 2026

Pubs, shops and hotels are carrying the biggest bill from the sick pay reforms, and the official guidance they're using to work it out doesn't apply to half their staff.

Since 6 April 2026 Statutory Sick Pay is the lower of £123.25 a week or 80% of average weekly earnings. The Employment Rights Act 2025 scrapped the three unpaid waiting days and abolished the Lower Earnings Limit. Around 1.3 million low-paid workers got SSP for the first time. Most of them work in hospitality, retail and tourism.

The bill

There is no rebate. The Percentage Threshold Scheme went in 2014 and the Covid scheme ended in March 2022. Employers pay every penny of SSP themselves.

The government's own estimate is about £15 per employee per year. That is a national average and it is close to useless for a sector where most of the workforce is part-time, low-paid and previously ineligible. Analysis for retail and food and beverage puts a 30-person business at roughly £4,200 a year more than under the old rules, based on the UK average of 5.7 sick days per employee. That is £140 a head, nearly ten times the government figure.

This lands on businesses already dealing with higher employer National Insurance and business rates. Hospitality runs on margins where a few thousand pounds is the difference between a profit and a loss.

The trap

Now the bit that catches people out.

The daily rate tables on GOV.UK are, in the government's own words, "based on the standard weekly rate". They only work for someone earning at least £154.06 a week. Below that, the 80% cap bites and every number in the table is too high.

Take a Saturday-only worker in a pub, earning £100 for the shift. The table says one qualifying day, one day off, pay £123.25. The law says pay £80. That is a 54% overpayment, made by doing exactly what the guidance says.

Now the full-time manager on £600 a week takes one day off. Five qualifying days, so £24.65. Both figures are correct. SSP replaces a week's work, and the daily rate is just that week divided by qualifying days. The Saturday worker lost their whole week. The manager lost a fifth of hers.

Correct is not the same as sensible, and it is not the same as easy to explain to the manager.

The people most likely to be miscalculated are exactly the ones the reform was meant to protect. Fewest qualifying days, so the daily rate looks most generous on paper. Lowest earnings, so the cap bites hardest. Casual and weekend staff whose hours move every week, so average weekly earnings have to be recalculated constantly. Hospitality, retail and tourism have more of these workers than anyone.

We'd like your views:

  • Is a weekend worker on £80 sick pay better treated than a full-timer getting £24.65 for the same single day off, or is that comparison meaningless?
  • The government says £15 per employee per year. Retail and hospitality analysis says nearer £140. Who is closer to what you're actually seeing?
  • Should small employers get an SSP rebate back, or did 2014 settle that argument?
  • Day one sick pay was meant to stop people dragging themselves in while contagious. In a kitchen or on a shop floor, is that worth the cost?
  • Guidance that only applies above an earnings threshold, without saying so at the top of the page. Fit for purpose?
  • If a pub owner overpays a Saturday worker by 54% because they followed GOV.UK, whose mistake is that?
  • Would you rather see the flat rate raised, or the cost taken off small employers?

3 responses from the Newspage community

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Kate UnderwoodVerified
Founder & Chief People Strategist at Kate Underwood HR and Training
I've read this three times hoping I'd misunderstood it. I hadn't.
Full-time manager, one sick day: £24.65. Saturday worker, same pub, same day off: £80. So the one with the contract, the loyalty and the pension gets a third as much to be poorly. Somewhere, someone signed that off and went to lunch.
Guidance that doesn't work for the very people the reform was built to protect is a fire exit with a sign reading "not for use in the event of fire".
And no, banning zero hours isn't the fix either. Seasonal staff aren't a loophole; they're how a pub survives a summer. Chase the ones abusing it, not the landlord doing his best with a rota and a prayer.
I want day one sick pay. Contagious chefs are nobody's business plan. But hand small employers a bill, a broken calculator and a rulebook you haven't finished writing, then act surprised when they stop hiring.
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Harvey DhillonVerified
Founder & CEO at Zmartly
A manager on £600 a week gets £24.65 for one sick day. A Saturday bar worker on £100 gets £80. Both are correct. Since 6 April, sick pay is the lower of £123.25 a week or 80 per cent of average earnings, spread across the days someone normally works. Fewer working days means more per day, so a part-timer can rightly get more for one day off than a full-timer. The trap is elsewhere: for anyone earning under £154.06 a week, every figure in GOV.UK's daily-rate tables is too high. In the payroll we run for small employers, the payslips most at risk are the new ones: low pay, variable hours, pub and shop staff among an estimated 1.3 million covered for the first time. So do not lift the table figure. Work out 80 per cent of that person's average weekly earnings, and if it is lower, that is what you pay. The government says this reform costs about £15 per employee a year. Follow the wrong table and one Saturday worker's sick day costs 54 per cent too much.
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Astrid Davies0
Founder CEO at ADCL
There is clearly a lot of concern about the impact that SSP will have on low-paid workers and the knock-on impact on their employers.

Often, low paid jobs are what was formerly known as "gig economy" jobs and it's a toxic world of hiring and firing at will. At least, it was, before ERA. Hospitality has famously had it hard since Covid. There is, however, a less well known trait in hospitality, retail and care: managers treating staff badly because they can, because the staff need the job and are scared to push back. In other words, many managers in the lower-paid sectors aren't good enough. They may well have been "promoted from the ranks". They may well have had zero management training and had it tough so assume that's the norm. Businesses would thrive if they cut staff turnover by having managers who are better at running their teams and if they invest only slightly more in training their staff. This would also help their margins. It would also help their customers - us.