SPM10710 - Statutory Sick Pay (SSP) - Calculating and paying SSP: Calculating SSP entitlement

To calculate how much SSP to pay, the employer must:

• decide if there is a PIW and if it links with an earlier PIW, see SPM10135 
• work out the number of QDs in the PIW, see SPM10140
• impose waiting days, if necessary, see SPM10134 
• calculate the number of QDs to be paid, and
• calculate the amount of SSP payable for the QDs.

The daily rate of SSP is the appropriate weekly rate divided by the number of agreed QDs in the week, to four decimal places.

If the number of QDs to be paid in any week is a full week’s QDs the amount of SSP payable is the same as the appropriate weekly rate.

If the numbers of QDs to be paid are less than a full week’s QDs, a multiple of the daily rate is paid.

To assist employers to pay the correct amount of SSP, there is a table in the Employer Helpbook for Statutory Sick Pay E14, , showing the current weekly rate, daily rates for one to seven QDs in a week, and the correct calculation of multiple days of SSP.

If SSP is worked out weekly, there may be odd days at both the beginning and end of the PIW.

Example

Appropriate weekly rate = £ 79.15

Works Monday to Saturday. Number of agreed QDs in the week = 6 days

Daily rate = £ 79.15 divided by 6 = £ 13.20

An employee becomes ill on Tuesday and is off work from Wednesday to Saturday. This forms a PIW with four QDs sickness in the first week. There is one QD to be paid (four minus three waiting days). The employee is off work for the following week so SSP is due at the weekly rate. He comes back to work on the Thursday of the third week so SSP is payable at the unrounded daily rate multiplied by three then rounded up to the nearest whole penny. This means that total SSP payable = £ 13.20 + £ 79.15 + £ 39.58.

Six weeks later, the same employee is off sick again for four days. As the PIWs link, the waiting days have already been accounted for in the earlier period and he is paid the daily rate multiplied by four, which is £ 52.77.

It is important to use the unrounded daily rate for multiples of a day as using the rounded daily rate can cause too much to be paid. In the above example, six times the daily rate of

£ 13.1916 is £ 79.15 but six times the rounded daily rate of £ 13.20 would be £ 79.20 .