Prison Officer Sick Pay 2026: What You Get and What Is Unknown

In shortSick pay is an occupational scheme on top of the legal minimum, with a published ceiling of 10 months in a four-year rolling period but no published full and half pay split.

• Ceiling10 monthsIn a four-year rolling period
• Full and half pay splitNot foundNo service schedule either
• SourceSection 5.7Prison Service Employee Package

Prison officers in England and Wales are employed by HMPPS as civil servants, and their sick pay is an occupational scheme on top of the legal minimum. HMPPS's Prison Service Employee Package puts it as quoted below.

It adds that entitlements are different in the Probation Service and tells staff to speak to their line manager.

Employee Package, section 5.7

Sick pay entitlements 'vary across different business groups and they depend on whether staff are on pre-modernised or modernised Terms and Conditions. For staff new to HMPPS, on modernised Terms and Conditions, sick pay entitlement is subject to an employee's length of service up to a maximum of 10 months sick pay in a four-year rolling period.'

• Your rights depend on which terms you are on.
• A new officer's entitlement grows with service.
• There is a ceiling of ten months of paid sickness in any four-year window.
• It does not say how many of those ten months are on full pay and how many on half, how fast entitlement builds in the first year, or what happens when the ten months run out.

In shortYour sick pay depends on whether you are on modernised or pre-modernised terms, and no cut-off date is published, so check your contract and ask HR.

In general terms, modernised terms are the newer contracts given to staff who joined recently, and pre-modernised terms are the older ones. For most officers recruited in the last few years, the relevant words in the Employee Package are 'for staff new to HMPPS, on modernised Terms and Conditions'.

Officers who joined much earlier, or who transferred in on protected terms, may have different, sometimes more generous, arrangements.

We could not find a published cut-off date for which staff are on which terms, so do not assume. If you transferred from another civil service department or from the probation service, ask whether your previous terms were protected on transfer, because the Employee Package says Probation Service entitlements are different.

• Look at your offer letter and contract for a sentence on sick pay and its service qualification.
• Ask HR which set of terms you are on and for the policy name or number in writing.
• If you transferred in, ask whether previous terms were protected.
• Keep a copy of every written answer; you may need it later for capability or ill-health processes.

In shortSSP is £123.25 a week or 80% of average weekly earnings if lower, for up to 28 weeks, payable from day one since 6 April 2026, and is about 18% of a Band 3 officer's normal pay.

• SSP rate£123.25 a weekOr 80% of average weekly earnings, whichever is lower
• Maximum duration28 weeksPaid by your employer
• Band 3 weekly pay£669.85£34,928 / 52.143, inc 20% UWH
• SSP as share of payAbout 18%80% would be £535.88 but the lower figure applies

Whatever your occupational scheme says, you cannot be paid less than the statutory amount. From 6 April 2026 the rules changed: SSP is available to all eligible employees regardless of their earnings, and is payable from the first full day of sickness absence, with no waiting days.

GOV.UK's guidance on absences straddling that date explains the transition for people already off sick.

Over a full 28 weeks the statutory amount would total £3,451, against roughly £18,800 of normal gross pay over the same 28 weeks. The gap is why the occupational scheme matters so much to officers.

In shortThe ceiling is a rolling window rather than an annual reset: old absences drop out of the four-year window as time passes.

The phrase 'a four-year rolling period' means your entitlement is not reset each April or on each anniversary. Instead, when you go sick, payroll looks back over the previous four years, adds up the paid sick time you have already used, and your remaining entitlement is the difference between your service-based entitlement and that total.

In HMPPS's wording the ceiling in any four-year window is 10 months of sick pay.

1. Payroll looks back over the previous four years when you go sick.
2. It adds up the paid sick time you have already used.
3. Your remaining entitlement is your service-based entitlement minus that total.
4. As time passes, early months roll off the back of the window and your available entitlement recovers.

In shortOrdinary sick pay covers illness or injury whatever the cause, while a separate injury benefit scheme can apply to duty-related injury, so log incidents and ask HR how your absence is classified.

Prison officers face assaults and work-related injury at a rate unlike most jobs, so it is worth separating sick pay from injury benefit. Ordinary sick pay under the occupational scheme is what you receive when you are off with illness or injury, regardless of cause.

A separate Civil Service injury benefit scheme can apply where an injury or illness is due to your duties, and it works through the pension arrangements rather than the sick pay scheme. We cover who qualifies and what it pays in civil service injury benefits for prison officers.

In shortAttendance is a live topic (13.2 days lost per operational officer), but the HMPPS policy and trigger points were not published in anything we could open, so process is your protection.

• Operational staff, year to 30 Sep 202513.2 daysAverage working days lost to sickness; 11.9 the year before
• Band 3 and 4 staff14.0 daysSame period, PSPRB

The legal rule for most workplaces is that you can self-certify the first seven days of absence and need a fit note from a doctor after that, but employers can set their own procedures. HMPPS has its own attendance management arrangements, with return-to-work conversations, support and escalation.

We did not find the policy text or its 'trigger points' in the sources we opened, and a Freedom of Information request page about prison officer sickness trigger points was not accessible to us, so we cannot quote numbers.

Ask your manager or POA rep for the current policy and read it before you need it.

Those averages are across a large workforce and include long-term sickness, so they do not predict anyone's own year. They do mean managers and HR are paying close attention to absence in the operational grades.

In shortWhether allowances count in sick pay, how pension accrual is protected and how leave carries over are not published, so ask HR to show each figure in writing.

Pay while you are off

Your 20% unsocial hours allowance is part of contracted pay rather than a payment per shift, but we found no published statement of whether HMPPS includes it in sick pay calculations or only your base. Payment Plus and market supplements are non-pensionable payments tied to duties or location, and we found no published rule on whether they continue in sickness. Ask HR to show the figure in writing.

Pension

Alpha contributions and accrual are based on pensionable earnings, and reduced pay periods can affect both what you pay and what you build. The Civil Service Pension Scheme has specific rules for sick pay and pensionable earnings, but we could not open the relevant page, so we do not state them.

Leave

Statutory holiday normally continues to build while you are off sick, but how HMPPS handles carry-over of untaken leave across a leave year during long sickness is a policy matter, not something we found in the published documents.

In shortMost officers never read the sick pay terms until they are ill: use this checklist in your first year and whenever your contract changes.

Most officers never read the sick pay terms until they are ill, which is the worst time to discover the gaps. Use this checklist in your first year, and again whenever your contract changes.