To think that Statutory Sick Pay is a joke?

[DelphiniumBlue]

I hope I'm wrong, but as I understand it SSP is just shy of £100 pw. That goes nowhere near covering the rent of even a small flat in London, let alone food/bills etc.
So if you are sick for more than a week or so, what do you do? Can you get benefits to top up? What happens if you can't work for a month, or 3 months?
Asking for a relative who is really worried about losing their home.

assuming the relative doesn’t get sick pay through there work?

It is a total joke.

I caught covid through work, there were 7 staff and numerous children off and all we got was SSP, yet we have worked though covid and been at the forefront with children each day! It’s shit! We got told we could take it as holidays, fucking cheek. I declined and took SSP.

It’s disgusting.

my company pay ‘ok’ sick pay but a severe illness would be devastating.

And people wonder why others go to work when they're sick.

This is where PPI used to come in to play. I'm not even sure if it exists anymore but we had PPI for our mortgage and when DS was off work for months with a serious injury we would have lost our house without it.

You can maybe claim universal credit if on long term sick leave. You can't even get SSP for the first 3 days either which makes it even worse

You can claim universal credit to cover the shortfall in your rent, but as it's based on your income over a calendar month, there may be no enitlement if you only lose a few days' pay.

You can do the calculation on entitledto.co.uk to see if you would get anything.

Yes, claim UC on top, do it ASAP though as takes a while

You need to insure your income with PHI so you get decent sick pay if you need it.

It's around 19% of average income, one of the lowest rates in the world. Which is presumably a factor in why Brits have one of the lowest rates of sick days in the world (despite the Tories and the Tory press banging on about lazy, workshy skivers).

It's awful. My first thought when I'm unwell is "can I afford this" and how much I have left from my annual five days sick allocation. Brother works for the council and gets six months, and was genuinely delighted when he broke his wrist (pre Covid/WFH) so he could take five weeks sick.

You can do a few things to future-proof this scenario. You can look for a job with decent sick pay, not just SSP. You can save 3-6 months outgoings in cash for a rainy day. You can buy critical illness cover insurance that pays out.

If you haven’t been able to do the above, then yes it is awful.

either SSP needs to be improved or even better employers need to be made to pay decent sick pay. I’ve just been off work due to covid for 10 days (I’m CV and was quite ill despite antivirals) fire time I have a job that doesn’t pay sick pay as I work part time I’m going to ask to make up the time otherwise I’m going to seriously short of money next month.

im going to look for a new job for sick pay again as if I get covid multiple times In a year I’m likely to need 7-10 days off each time according to my consultant

What world do people live in? If you're in a job that won't pay any sick pay chances are you've not got spare income to be buying PHI once you've paid your rent, food, bills, travel etc. Insurance, and an expensive one at that, isn't going to be top priority in the worst cost of living crisis for decades.

I guess if it were more, people would abuse it more.

How about we worry less about abuse and about people potentially losing their homes and being in financial hardship and potentially making their ill health worse due to poor sick pay. Seems the UK won the race to the bottom.

I did acknowledge in my post that yes it is very shit if you can’t do any of the above things.

In general, I don’t think enough people think about things like sick pay before they have to. So it’s worth saying that you can look for a job where the sick pay is not just statutory minimum - that should be a priority really and we don’t talk about it enough. If you can save up then you should do that too. I can’t afford critical illness insurance and for the first time in a long time I’m in a job with terrible sick pay terms - it’s a worry. But it’s my responsibility to do something about it I guess because if I did get sick we’d be stuffed without a rainy day cushion.

Yep, work in a GP Surgery so don't get NHS sick pay unfortunately. Had covid twice December and March and pregnant in March whilst having it. Would have been well enough in December to come in and would have only needed 5 days off in March. But got SSP from day 3 of being off sick. Its disgusting to think we are 'front line key workers' (I hate that term!!) Yet can't get decent sick pay (or mat pay whilst we are on the topic!!

Im not sure thats true though, plenty of workplaces have decent sick pay, my last place was 6 months full pay and our average sickness was lower than the UK average

The problem is these types of policies are not talked about in interviews and certainly aren't the kind of thing you can ask about. So you generally don't know what the sick pay or maternity pay is until you start and get shown where the policies are.

I wish there were guidelines about these things having to be shown in job adverts etc

Everyone should have income protection and critical illness cover where applicable.

Everyone working full time should also be paid enough that they don't have to use food banks or claim benefits. Unfortunately thats not currently the case

People who are self-employed don't get any sick pay at all, which is why most of them keep working through ailments & illnesses. I guess they'd be delighted to get SSP, so it's all relative.

But shouldn't be a race to the bottom

I pay critical illness insurance which also covers redundancy