SSP for Zero-Hours, Agency and Part-Time Workers
For years, the standard answer to "do I get sick pay on a zero-hours contract?" was effectively no. Not because contract type excluded you, but because the earnings threshold did. Work a few short shifts a week and your average earnings fell below the Lower Earnings Limit, and SSP was worth nothing.
That changed on 6 April 2026. The earnings threshold was abolished, and so were the three unpaid waiting days. If you were told years ago that you did not qualify, the reason you were given no longer exists. This page explains how the calculation works when your hours are not fixed. It is general information rather than advice on your own contract.
What Actually Determines Eligibility Now
Three things, and hours are not one of them.
You must be classed as an employee, you must have done some work for the employer, and you must have been ill for at least one full qualifying day. You also have to tell your employer within their deadline.
There is no minimum number of hours, no minimum length of service and, since April 2026, no minimum earnings. A person who worked one shift last week and is ill this week can be entitled to SSP.
Employee status is the question that matters. Zero-hours does not mean self-employed. Most people on zero-hours contracts in retail, hospitality, care and warehousing are employees or workers with employee status for statutory payment purposes. If you are on PAYE, with tax and National Insurance deducted by the business, that is a strong indicator. Genuinely self-employed contractors are outside SSP altogether.
The 80% Rule Is the Change That Matters Most
SSP for 2026/27 is £123.25 a week, or 80% of your normal weekly earnings, whichever is lower.
For someone on irregular hours, the 80% half is usually what applies. That is a smaller cash amount than a full-time worker receives, but it is a great deal more than the nothing that the earnings threshold used to produce.
| Average weekly earnings | Weekly SSP now | Weekly SSP before April 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| £60 | £48.00 | Nil |
| £90 | £72.00 | Nil |
| £120 | £96.00 | Nil |
| £140 | £112.00 | £118.75 |
| £200 | £123.25 | £118.75 |
The comparison column uses the 2025/26 rate and the threshold that applied then. The three rows at the top are the point of the reform.
Working Out Average Weekly Earnings on Irregular Hours
Your earnings are averaged over a relevant period of eight weeks ending with the last normal payday before the sickness started.
If you are paid weekly, add the gross pay in that period and divide by the number of whole weeks. If monthly, add the gross pay, divide by the number of whole months, multiply by 12 and divide by 52.
Everything paid in that window counts, including overtime, shift premiums, holiday pay and bonuses. Weeks in which you did no work count as zero and still divide into the total, which is why a quiet spell before an illness lowers the average.
Zero-hours example. You are paid weekly and your gross pay over the eight-week relevant period was £180, £95, £0, £210, £160, £140, £85 and £190. That totals £1,060, so your average weekly earnings are £132.50. Eighty per cent of that is £106, which is lower than £123.25, so your weekly SSP is £106.
If you have been employed for less than eight weeks, the average is worked out from whatever you have actually earned up to the first day of sickness, rather than you being excluded for lack of history.
Qualifying Days When You Have No Fixed Pattern
SSP is paid per qualifying day, and qualifying days are normally the days you are contracted or expected to work. That is straightforward on a fixed rota and awkward on a zero-hours contract, where there may be no agreed pattern at all.
Qualifying days can be agreed between you and your employer. Where nothing is agreed, the regulations provide a fallback, and the requirement that always holds is that there must be at least one qualifying day in every week. Nobody can be left with none, because that would mean SSP could never be paid.
The daily rate is the weekly amount divided by the number of qualifying days in that week. On the example above, with £106 a week and three qualifying days, that is £35.33 a day.
Watch how your employer sets qualifying days. Setting them at the days you happened to be rostered, then removing you from the rota once you report sick, is not a legitimate way to make SSP disappear. If the pattern of qualifying days seems to be constructed around your absence rather than your normal working, that is worth challenging.
Agency Workers
Agency workers are usually employed by the agency rather than the hirer, so SSP is the agency's responsibility. In practice it turns on the contract you signed with them.
The usual sticking point is what happens between assignments. If your contract of employment with the agency has genuinely ended, SSP ends with it, because a live contract is one of the conditions. If the contract continues between placements, entitlement continues too.
Agencies do sometimes tell workers they are not entitled because they are "between assignments" when the contract has not in fact ended. Ask for it in writing on an SSP1, which requires them to state a reason, and if the reason does not stand up, our article on employers refusing SSP sets out the escalation route.
Part-Time Workers
Part-time workers have always been eligible, and the calculation follows the same rules as anyone else. What surprises people is how the daily rate falls out.
Work two days a week and you have two qualifying days, so the weekly SSP is divided by two rather than five. Someone on the full rate working two days gets £61.63 a day, against £24.65 for a five-day worker. Miss both of your days and you receive a full week of SSP, exactly as a five-day worker who misses all five does.
The Part-time Workers Regulations also mean a company sick pay scheme cannot exclude part-time staff or apply less favourable terms without objective justification. If your handbook offers occupational sick pay only to full-time employees, that is worth questioning.
More Than One Job
Each employment is assessed separately. If you have two part-time jobs and you are too ill to do either, you can be entitled to SSP from both employers at once, each calculated on that job's own earnings and qualifying days.
You have to notify each employer separately and meet each one's reporting deadline. Two smallish SSP payments can add up to more than one job would have produced, so it is worth doing properly rather than only telling the employer you think of as the main one.
What to Do If You Were Turned Down Before
Ask again. Not about the old absence, which is history, but about your entitlement now.
Payroll systems and staff handbooks lag behind legal changes, and an absence policy written in 2024 will still describe waiting days and an earnings threshold. If you are told you do not qualify on either of those grounds, the person telling you is working from a policy that has not been updated. Put the question in writing, and ask for form SSP1 stating the reason if they maintain the refusal.
Work out what you should be getting first, either from our calculation guide or with the SSP calculator, so you are asking about a specific figure rather than a general grievance. That tends to get the matter fixed a great deal faster.