Yes — statutory sick pay counts as qualifying earnings for automatic enrolment. Section 13 of the Pensions Act 2008 lists SSP expressly alongside salary, wages, commission, bonuses and overtime. The question that actually causes payroll errors is a different one: what happens to contributions when an employee's pay falls, and that turns on the thresholds rather than on SSP itself.
The statutory answer
Qualifying earnings are the components of pay listed in Pensions Act 2008 section 13(3), and statutory sick pay is one of them. The full list also takes in statutory maternity, paternity, adoption, shared parental, parental bereavement and neonatal care pay.
The Pensions Regulator states it the same way in its detailed guidance: qualifying earnings are earnings between the lower and upper limits made up of salary, wages, commission, bonuses, overtime, statutory sick pay, statutory maternity pay, ordinary or additional statutory paternity pay and statutory adoption pay.
So for a scheme using the standard qualifying earnings definition, SSP is pensionable and contributions are calculated on it in the ordinary way.
One qualification worth stating, because it is where the real-world answer sometimes differs. Many schemes use a certified alternative definition of pensionable pay — the basic pay sets — rather than qualifying earnings. In those schemes what is pensionable depends on the scheme's own definition of pensionable pay, so the scheme rules decide it. The clean, statutory answer is the narrow one: SSP is a component of qualifying earnings under section 13(3).
The 2026 SSP reform
Two long-standing features of SSP disappeared on 6 April 2026, and any payroll still applying the old rules is now wrong:
- The three waiting days are gone. SSP is payable from the first day of sickness absence;
- The lower earnings limit condition is gone. SSP is available to all eligible employees regardless of earnings.
The rate changed shape at the same time. For 2026/27, SSP is £123.25 a week or 80% of the employee's average weekly earnings, whichever is lower. Daily rates run from £17.61 where there are seven qualifying days in the week up to £123.25 where there is one.
The 80% formula is the part that catches employers out. A lower-paid employee who would previously have received nothing now receives 80% of their average weekly earnings, which may be well below the flat rate — the flat rate is a ceiling, not a floor.
The changes were made by sections 10 and 11 of the Employment Rights Act 2025, commenced by SI 2026/373 on 6 April 2026, with consequential amendments in SI 2026/210.
Contributions when pay drops
This is the question that sits behind most "is SSP pensionable" searches. An employee on long-term sick leave receiving only SSP has a much lower weekly figure than usual, and the payroll has to decide what to do about pension contributions.
The thresholds for 2026/27 are unchanged from the previous year:
- Automatic enrolment earnings trigger — £10,000 a year;
- Lower level of qualifying earnings — £6,240 a year, which is £120 a week or £520 a month;
- Upper level of qualifying earnings — £50,270 a year, which is £4,189 a month.
The Pensions Regulator's position follows from those figures. Where a member's earnings fall below £192 a week (£833 a month) in a pay period but remain above £120 a week (£520 a month), contributions are still payable. Below £120 a week, there may be no contributions due, and the member may remain in the scheme during that period — subject to the scheme's own rules, which is why the provider should be checked rather than assumed.
In other words: an employee on SSP alone at £123.25 a week sits just above the £120 weekly lower limit, so contributions continue, calculated on the small slice above it. An employee receiving 80% of low average weekly earnings may fall below it. Two employees both "on SSP" can therefore have different contribution outcomes, and a payroll applying one rule to both will get one of them wrong.
What to check
Four things. Confirm which definition of pensionable pay your scheme uses, because that decides whether SSP is pensionable under the scheme as opposed to under the statutory qualifying earnings test. Check that the payroll has applied the removal of waiting days and of the lower earnings limit from 6 April 2026 — the absence of an error message means nothing here, because the old logic simply pays less.
Then test the 80% cap against a genuinely low-paid example rather than a median one. And document what happens to contributions during extended absence, including any employer decision to maintain contributions at pre-absence levels, which is common, contractual in some businesses, and not a statutory requirement.
Employers should also note that these SSP changes sit alongside the wider Employment Rights Act package — the working time and record-keeping duties are moving on their own timetable, and payroll policy documents written before 2026 will be out of date in more than one respect.
Acumon handles sick pay, auto-enrolment and the contribution calculations through payroll management and auto-enrolment services, with pension administration alongside — and a payroll audit is the quickest way to confirm the April 2026 changes were applied correctly. If you have employees who were previously below the lower earnings limit, they are entitled to SSP now and probably were not paid it in April.