Sick Pay and Universal Credit Calculator

Statutory Sick Pay changed shape on 6 April 2026. It is now £123.25 a week or 80% of your normal weekly earnings, whichever is lower, paid from the first day you are off, with no lower earnings limit, for up to 28 weeks. This calculator works out which of the two applies to you from your gross pay, and turns it into an average month. Universal Credit counts what is actually paid in each assessment period, so a month with an extra payday counts more.

Then it adds Universal Credit. Universal Credit does not ignore SSP: it counts it as earnings, after tax and National Insurance, so a work allowance protects some or all of it and the 55% taper applies to the rest. The result is what you have each month while you are off, sick pay and Universal Credit together, and how much of that is Universal Credit topping it up.

If your employer pays more than SSP under its own scheme, choose company sick pay and enter the monthly amount. It is taxed like wages and counted the same way, and it can never be less than SSP.

Since 6 April 2026 SSP is whichever is lower: £123.25 a week, or 80% of your normal weekly earnings. Normal weekly earnings are your gross pay, before tax and National Insurance, averaged over the 8 weeks before you went off sick (or before the first absence, if this one links to an absence that ended 8 weeks ago or less), and monthly pay is multiplied by 12 and divided by 52 to get there. The two figures meet at £154.06 a week, which at the National Living Wage of £12.71 an hour is about 12.1 hours. Earn more than that and you get the flat rate, however much more. Earn less and you get 80%. SSP is paid for the days you would normally have worked, the weekly rate shared across them, on your usual payday and in the same way as your wages, with tax and National Insurance taken off where they are due. It lasts up to 28 weeks in one spell, so the most a spell can pay at the flat rate is £3,451.00. If you started the job recently and have not yet had 8 weeks' pay, you still qualify, as long as you have done some work under the contract.

As earnings, not as a benefit. Regulation 55 of the Universal Credit Regulations 2013 treats Statutory Sick Pay as employed earnings, and sick pay from your employer's own scheme counts too, because for tax it is pay from the job. So it is counted after income tax and National Insurance, the work allowance applies to it, and above the allowance your award falls by 55p for every pound. That is gentler than it sounds. With no work allowance, flat-rate SSP of £534.08 a month costs £293.74 of Universal Credit and leaves you £240.34 better off than no sick pay at all. With the £427.00 allowance that applies when your award includes housing it costs £58.89, and with the £710.00 allowance that applies when it does not, it costs nothing. Like wages, SSP counts in the assessment period it is paid in. Two kinds of income are not earnings: New Style Employment and Support Allowance, and payments from an income protection policy you took out yourself. Both are unearned income and come off your award in full, with no work allowance and no taper.

SSP stops after 28 weeks, when you go back to work, or when your job ends, unless your employer ended it mainly to avoid paying SSP. Your employer must send you form SSP1 by the start of week 23 if your SSP is going to run out before you recover, or within 7 days if it stops unexpectedly while you are still ill. Use that notice. You cannot get New Style Employment and Support Allowance while you are on SSP, but you can apply up to 3 months before it ends and it starts as soon as the SSP stops. It depends on the National Insurance contributions you have paid, it can run alongside Universal Credit, and your Universal Credit is reduced by the full amount of it. Universal Credit does not end with SSP. If you already claim it, the award rises once the sick pay stops being counted as earnings, and if you do not, losing the SSP may be what makes you eligible. If you are well enough to work but the job has gone, New Style JSA or Universal Credit is the next decision.

For SSP your employer can ask for a fit note once you have been off more than 7 days in a row, counting days you would not normally work, and cannot hold back SSP because it arrives late. Universal Credit asks for one on the same timescale, and the guide to Universal Credit when you are sick covers who can write one and when a Work Capability Assessment follows. The assessment matters to your money. A finding of limited capability for work, usually made after it, is what gives a claimant with no children a work allowance, and limited capability for work and work-related activity adds the health element, which you can estimate with the Health Element Calculator and score descriptor by descriptor with the LCWRA Points Calculator. Until that decision a new claim is paid without the health element. One trap is specific to sick pay. Monthly earnings of £881.23 or more before tax, 16 hours a week at the National Living Wage, bar the assessment, with narrow exceptions such as getting Personal Independence Payment, and sick pay counts as earnings for that test. SSP from one job, about £534.08 in an average month, stays under it. Company sick pay can go over it, and then the assessment may have to wait until the sick pay drops.