Sick pay, parental pay,
and who reclaims what.

The main statutory payments

• —Statutory Sick Pay, for eligible employees off sick beyond the waiting days.
• —Statutory Maternity Pay, paid across a set period at rates that step down after the first weeks.
• —Statutory Paternity Pay, for eligible partners taking leave around a birth or adoption.
• —Shared Parental Pay, where leave is divided between partners.
• —Statutory Adoption Pay, broadly mirroring maternity provisions.
• —Statutory Neonatal Care Pay, a more recent entitlement worth checking if it applies.

Qualifying conditions matter as much as rates

Each payment has its own tests: length of service, average weekly earnings above a threshold, and notice given within a required window. An employee can be genuinely unwell or genuinely on leave and still not qualify.

Getting this wrong in either direction causes problems — underpaying creates a liability and a grievance, overpaying is difficult to recover from someone who has already spent it.

What you can reclaim

Employers can generally reclaim a proportion of statutory parental payments, and smaller employers can often reclaim a higher proportion plus compensation, subject to a National Insurance threshold test.

Statutory Sick Pay is not generally reclaimable. The recovery percentages and thresholds are set in legislation and change — check the current figures on gov.uk before budgeting for them.