Major change to sick pay from TOMORROW as payments rise

A MAJOR change to sick pay is coming in tomorrow which means you could get paid MORE for your time off. With the start of the new tax year, on April 6, statutory sick pay will rise to £99.35 a week. Currently it’s £96.35. which means a £3 increase per week for employees. Statutory sick […]

A MAJOR change to sick pay is coming in tomorrow which means you could get paid MORE for your time off.

With the start of the new tax year, on April 6, statutory sick pay will rise to £99.35 a week.

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Statutory sick pay will rise from tomorrow[/caption]

Currently it’s £96.35. which means a £3 increase per week for employees.

Statutory sick pay (SSP) and Employment Support Allowance (ESA) are two of the main benefits you could get if you’re ill.

SSP is the minimum a worker can get under the law if unwell and unable to work.

So you can’t get any less than this, but your boss may well pay more, it all depends on your contract.

It’s paid by your employer for up to 28 weeks.

Noelle Murphy, senior HR practice editor at XpertHR said: “Though it is of course a welcomed increased for employees, this still equates to an hourly rate of just £2.83 for a standard 35 hour week.

“With the rate of inflation standing a 6.2%, energy bills increasing and car fuel also rising sharply, the rate of statutory sick pays falls well short of supporting an individual who cannot work due to sickness.”

Agency workers are entitled to the same SSP as all other employees.

To make a claim, you must have done some work for your employer, be earning an average of at least £120 a week and have been ill for at least four days (including non-working days).

Proof of sickness after seven days will also be required with a sick note from your doctor or an allied health professional. 

SSP is then paid by your employer in the same way as your normal wages – so the money will come in when you might usually expect your wages , for example weekly or monthly.

But tax and National Insurance is still deducted as well.

The rules for how you qualified for the pay changed slightly during the Covid outbreak to offer more support.

If you were self-isolating or sick from Covid you were able to get SSP from day one instead of after three days.

But on March 24 those rules were scrapped and returned back to the previous criteria.

That applied even if you were off sick with Covid too – and there’s no longer a legal requirement to self-isolate, even if you test positive for Covid.

The move was introduced as part of the Government’s “Living with Covid” strategy that marked the end of two years of lockdowns and testing.

Along with this, free Covid test kits have been scrapped.