Employer Handbook for Statutory Sick Pay

Are you liable to pay employer’s Class 1 NICs on your employee’s earnings?

Employee working outside UK on first day of PIW

Employees who work outside the UK on the first day of a PIW may be entitled to SSP if you are liable to pay employer’s Class 1 NICs, or would be if the employee’s earnings were high enough.

To qualify to get SSP from you an employee must have AWE of at least £97.00 in the eight weeks before the first day they are first off work sick. See How to work out Average Weekly Earnings (AWE).

If your employee’s PIW or linked PIW continues but your liability to pay employer’s Class 1 NICs ceases, the employee is still entitled to SSP until their entitlement stops for another reason, for example they have had 28 weeks’ SSP or have become fit for work.

You take over a business

If you take over a business or part of a business and the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) (TUPE) Regulations 2006 apply, then continuity of employment is not broken.

The regulations apply when you take over an economic entity (a business, part of a business, or a service provision) together with contracts of employment of the employees being transferred with the business. The employee liability information which the transferring employer must provide will give the identities of those employees being transferred with the business.

If you are not sure if the TUPE Regulations 2006apply contact Acas or phone 08457 47 47 47 or in Northern Ireland contact the LRA or phone 028 9032 1442.

If you take over a business during the relevant period you must still add together all their earnings in the relevant period even where some of them were paid by the previous employer.

If the employee was getting SSP at the time you took over the business you must carry on paying it until the PIW ends.

© Crown copyright 2009