Prison officer sick pay calculator

What this prison officer sick pay calculator does

When you are off sick, what you are paid depends on two things: the statutory minimum that applies to almost everyone, and whatever occupational scheme your employer adds on top. This sick pay modeller shows both, week by week, for your own pay and a sickness absence of any length up to a year.

HMPPS's Employee Package (2023-24 edition) says that for staff new to HMPPS on modernised terms, sick pay depends on length of service up to a maximum of 10 months in a rolling four-year period. What it does not publish, in any document we could open, is how many of those weeks are on full pay and how many on half pay, so we will not guess that split. So the tool is built as a configurable entitlement modeller. Statutory Sick Pay is built in and checked; the occupational scale is a set of editable boxes that you fill in from your contract or HR policy. When you switch to 'My employer's scheme' the starting values are labelled as placeholders, not a statement of what you are entitled to.

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Statutory Sick Pay in 2026/27

Statutory Sick Pay (SSP) for the 2026 to 2027 tax year is £123.25 a week or 80% of your average weekly earnings, whichever is lower, according to GOV.UK's employer rates and thresholds. For a prison officer on any published Band 3 rate, 80% of earnings is far above £123.25, so the flat weekly figure applies. SSP is payable for up to 28 weeks.

That is a large step down from normal pay. A Band 3 officer on the top pay point of the 37-hour table (£36,778 a year) earns about £707 a week before deductions. SSP is £123.25: roughly 17% of normal pay. This is why the occupational scheme matters so much, and why knowing exactly what your own contract promises is worth a conversation with HR before you need it.

How to use the modeller

1. Pick your pay from the published 2026/27 tables, or type your own annual figure.
2. Choose 'Statutory only' to see the minimum, or 'My employer's scheme' to enter full-pay and half-pay weeks from your contract.
3. If your scheme counts absence over a rolling period, enter the weeks you have already used in the last window.
4. Set the length of your absence. The chart shows weekly pay received against normal pay, and the timeline shows each phase.
5. Read the take-home loss: it removes the lost gross pay from the year and recalculates income tax, National Insurance and pension, so it is lower than the gross loss.

Worked example

Suppose a National Band 3 officer on 37 hours at the top pay point is off for 12 weeks and their scheme (as entered by them) gives 13 weeks on full pay. All 12 weeks are at normal pay and there is no loss. Now suppose the scheme gave only 4 weeks full and 4 weeks half pay: weeks 5 to 8 are paid at about £353 a week (half of £707), and weeks 9 to 12 fall to SSP at £123.25. Total pay over the 12 weeks is roughly £4,900 against £8,490 of normal pay, a gross loss of about £3,600 before the effect of lower tax.

Those numbers use made-up scheme terms to show the mechanics. Replace them with yours.

Things the numbers do not cover

• Work-related injury and assault. Injuries sustained on duty can be handled under separate rules rather than ordinary sick pay. Ask HR and your POA representative, and see our guide to Civil Service injury benefits for prison officers.
• Long-term illness and ill-health retirement. Extended absence can lead to a capability process or a pension decision: see ill-health retirement and sickness absence management.
• Payment Plus, supplements and other extras. These are normally not assumed to be paid while you are off; the modeller leaves them out unless you switch the option on.
• Benefits. Universal Credit, income protection and other benefits are not modelled.
• Tax code and pension nuances. Standard 2026/27 rUK tax and alpha contributions only.

How much sickness is normal in the prison service?

The Prison Service Pay Review Body reported that operational prison staff lost an average of 13.2 working days to sickness in the year to 30 September 2025, up from 11.9 the year before, and 14.0 days for Bands 3 and 4. That context is useful if you want to model a realistic short absence rather than a long one: most absences are measured in days or a couple of weeks, which is why the slider begins at one week.

Questions to put to HR

• How many weeks of full pay and half pay am I entitled to, and does that depend on my length of service?
• Over what rolling period is absence counted, and how much have I used?
• Is half pay topped up to at least Statutory Sick Pay?
• Are Payment Plus, market supplements or other allowances paid during sickness?
• Do different rules apply if the absence is because of an assault or injury at work?
• What happens to my pension contributions and pension build while I am on reduced pay?

A word on honesty

We would rather show you a gap than fill it with a number we cannot source. If the full-pay and half-pay split is published somewhere we have not found, tell us and we will check them and update this page, with a date, openly. See our methodology for how we handle unverified facts.