Since 6 April 2026, statutory sick pay starts on the first day someone is off, and every employee qualifies regardless of what they earn. Salons run on part-time hours and Saturday staff, the exact people the old rules excluded, so this lands harder on a salon rota than on most payrolls. The rates are knowable, the cost is modest, and the record-keeping is where most salons will get caught out.
What changed
Two rules went at once. The three waiting days are gone, so SSP is now payable from day one of absence instead of day four. And the lower earnings limit is gone, so employees earning under £125 a week, who previously got nothing at all, now qualify.
The rate for 2026/27 is £123.25 a week, or 80% of the employee's average weekly earnings if that comes out lower. The 80% rule exists for exactly the low earners the old rules excluded, so that sick pay never pays more than working would have.
What it costs on a real rota
Take a salon with two full-timers, three part-timers on three days a week, and a Saturday junior. SSP is paid per qualifying day, meaning the days each person normally works, so a week's rate divides across however many days that employee would have worked.
A full-timer off for one day costs £24.65, which is £123.25 across five working days. A three-day part-timer off for one of her days costs £41.08, because the same weekly rate divides across three days rather than five. Under the old rules both of those absences cost nothing, since day one fell inside the waiting days.
Across a year, a normal amount of short-term absence for that team, call it three single days each for the five adults and a couple of Saturdays for the junior, comes to roughly £650 in sick pay that didn't exist as a cost before April. That won't sink anyone on its own; the sharper effect is that a Monday phone call now has a price on it, which makes accurate records matter in a way they didn't when short absences were free.
The 80% rule and low earners
A Saturday assistant earning £80 a week gets 80% of that, £64, because it's lower than £123.25. Her qualifying day count is one, so a single Saturday off sick costs the full £64. Run the comparison for each low earner on your payroll once, note the figure, and nobody ends up overpaying or arguing about it at the till on a busy Saturday.
There's no rebate
Small employers can't reclaim SSP from HMRC. The old reclaim scheme was abolished back in 2014 and nothing has replaced it for 2026/27, so every pound of this comes out of the salon. If a rebate for small employers ever returns it will be well publicised, and until then the planning assumption is that sick pay is your cost, in full.
What you need to record
For each absence: the dates, which of them were qualifying days, and what you paid. Employees can self-certify for the first seven days, and a fit note from a GP is only required after that. Keep the records even for a one-day absence, partly because payroll needs them and partly because a pattern of Mondays is invisible until it's written down in one place.
Your own sick pay policy
If your contracts promise more than the statutory minimum, perhaps full pay for the first week, the new rules sit underneath that promise rather than replacing it. Day-one SSP may already be covered by what you offer, or it may quietly extend it. Read the sickness clause in your own contracts before the first absence of the new tax year turns into a debate about what the salon owes.
What's coming next
The same Employment Rights Act carries more changes still being consulted on through 2026, including guaranteed hours for regular patterns and notice rules for shift changes, with the substance expected in 2027. If your Saturday cover runs on flexible, ask-on-Thursday arrangements, that's the one to watch, and it belongs on the same list as the April wage rises when you plan next year's prices.
What to do
Check that your absence records exist at all, because plenty of salons track absence in the owner's head and nowhere else. Put the new rate and the day-one rule into payroll, or confirm your payroll provider already has. Work out the 80% figure for each low earner now, calmly, rather than during somebody's first Monday off.
None of this is legal advice, and for anything contested the people to ask are Acas or the NHBF. For everything else, the whole change reduces to paying from day one, paying the lower of two knowable figures, and writing it all down, which is well within a salon owner's Tuesday. Keeping the team in good enough shape that the phone rarely rings on a Monday is a different job entirely.