Coronavirus and Statutory Sick Pay

The Government has passed emergency legislation extending the definition of those who are entitled to statutory sick pay to include anyone who is “isolating himself from other people in such a manner as to prevent infection or contamination with coronavirus disease, in accordance with guidance published by Public Health England, NHS National Services Scotland, or Public Health Wales and effective on 12 March 2020” and “by reason of that isolation is unable to work”.

Importantly, this means that an individual who is otherwise capable of working but who is in self-isolation in accordance with PHE (and other devolved authority) guidance is entitled to SSP.  That individual does not have to have been diagnosed with coronavirus.

Current guidance states that anyone who has symptoms of coronavirus, however mild, must not leave their home for seven days from when the symptoms started. Those individuals are sick and so would have been entitled to SSP in any event. But the guidance also now requests those in the same household as anyone exhibiting Coronavirus symptoms to self-isolate for fourteen days, even if well in themselves. The change to the law would capture such persons and give them a right to SSP.  

Emergency legislation extending the right to SSP from the first day of sickness instead of the fourth, as promised in the Budget, is expected imminently.   

Statutory sick pay is only £94.25 per week, but this provides new protection for employees whose employers do not have more generous company sick pay schemes.  For those that do, employers will need to consider whether to apply the same rules to company sick pay, to which the right answer in these extreme circumstances is almost certainly “yes”.  A key question, however, is whether the isolation renders the individual “unable to work”: the current crisis is generating a huge uptick in home working, and many individuals who are quite properly self-isolating in accordance with PHE guidance but are otherwise capable of carrying on working remotely will doubtless do just that and will continue to be paid normal salary.

For more information, please see our regularly updated coronavirus FAQs for employers.