NHS Sick Pay Calculator 2026/27

Calculate your sick pay

How this is modelled: entitlement months are converted at 52.143 weeks a year (the site's standard convention); SSP is worked out weekly from your current pay, assuming it matches your 8-week average; pension contributions are charged on your occupational sick pay at the tier your actual pay falls into — if your payroll also charges contributions on SSP itself, take-home will be slightly lower. Your payslip is authoritative.

The NHS sick pay scale — Section 14 entitlement

Two details catch people out. First, the scale is set by the year of service you are in on the first day of the absence: three completed years means you are in your fourth year, so the 5 + 5 scale applies. Second, it is a rolling 12-month maximum, not a fresh allowance for each absence — paid sick leave in the previous 12 months is deducted from your entitlement before a new absence is calculated (Section 14.7). Absence caused by a work injury follows the separate Injury Allowance route instead.

How NHS sick pay is actually worked out

Full pay means basic pay plus London weighting — not your rota

Since 1 July 2018, occupational sick pay in England is calculated on your pay point plus HCAS and any pay protection in payment (Section 14.5). Unsocial hours enhancements are not payable during sickness absence for anyone who started after that date or whose basic pay is above £18,160 — which is effectively every Band 2 to 9 salary. If your normal take-home leans heavily on nights and weekends, your sick pay will feel lower than your usual payslip even at "full pay". A small legacy group (employed on 30 June 2018 on £18,160 or less) and work-injury cases still use the older averaged definition.

SSP changed in April 2026 — the old rules are gone

From 6 April 2026, Statutory Sick Pay is £123.25 a week, or 80% of your average weekly earnings if that is lower. It is paid from the first full day of absence — the three waiting days were abolished — there is no minimum earnings threshold, and the most you can receive is 28 weeks in one period of incapacity. Older guides quoting a lower flat rate with three waiting days are out of date.

How SSP fits inside NHS sick pay

At full pay, SSP is inclusive — it is inside your full pay, not added to it. At half pay, SSP is paid on top, but the combined amount must not exceed full pay (Section 14.6). And the 28-week SSP clock starts on day one of your absence, not when occupational pay ends: on a 12-month absence, SSP has already run out long before half pay does. Sick pay overall, including any state benefits, must never exceed full pay (Section 14.8).

Your pension is protected while you are paid

While any sick pay is being paid, you keep contributing — on the pay you actually receive, so in the half-pay phase your contribution tier is set on your reduced pay and the percentage normally drops a tier. Your employer, by contrast, pays contributions on your full unreduced pay, and your pensionable pay is "deemed" back to the normal rate when your eventual pension is calculated. Only when pay stops completely do contributions stop and the days become disallowed days on your record.

Worked example — Band 5 nurse, 8 weeks off

A Band 5 nurse at entry point (£32,073) is in her fourth year of service, so her scale is 5 months full pay plus 5 months half pay. An 8-week absence sits entirely inside full pay: £4,920.78 gross and £3,756.21 take-home across the absence — £2,040.21 a month, exactly her normal take-home, because occupational full pay is her normal basic pay.

If the same absence ran on into half pay, each half-pay month would pay £1,871.93 gross — half salary plus the £123.25-a-week SSP top-up, under the full-pay cap — and £1,571.60 take-home. Her pension contribution for that phase falls to £1,042.37 a year, because the tier is set on her reduced pay (6.5% instead of 8.3%), while her employer's contributions continue on the full £32,073. These are the calculator's default settings above — change the absence length to 30 weeks to see the phases switch.

Scotland: the same scale, a different definition of pay

NHS Scotland uses the identical Section 14 scale and the same SSP rules — but Scotland's definition of full pay is broader. Under the Scotland & Northern Ireland edition of the Handbook (Section 14.4), full pay includes regularly paid supplements — including unsocial hours payments — averaged over your previous three months at work. There is no equivalent of England's post-2018 exclusion. Because Scottish pension treatment during sick leave is administered separately by the SPPA, this calculator currently models England only; a Scotland mode will follow once that treatment is verified. In the meantime, the entitlement scale and phase timings above apply in Scotland too — only the full-pay amount can be higher if you regularly work unsocial hours. See NHS Scotland pay for the Scottish scales.