Staff costs are often a large portion of your expenditure as a business owner, so it’s important you have a clear understanding of required payments and effective financial planning.

It’s common for employers to overlook statutory payments alongside regular staff salaries. This oversight is especially important in the 2024/25 financial year, given the recent increase in statutory payment rates.

So, to ensure you remain compliant with regulations and sustain positive relationships with employees and stakeholders, you’ll need to stay informed about the current rates of statutory payments.

What are the current statutory payment rates?

When you hire an individual or team, you are obligated to provide statutory payments to employees under specific conditions when they are unable to work for extended periods, such as during maternity, paternity or adoption leave.

For the 2024/25 period, statutory payments, including all forms of parental and sick pay, have seen a slight increase.

The Statutory Sick Pay (SSP) rate has been raised to £116.75 per week.

A revised parental pay rate of £184.03 (previously £172.48) has been implemented and is applicable to the following statutory payments:

• Statutory Maternity Pay (SMP)
• Statutory Adoption Pay (SAP)
• Statutory Paternity Pay (SPP)
• Statutory Shared Parental Pay (ShPP)
• Statutory Parental Bereavement Pay (SPBP)

It is essential to provide these payments to eligible employees throughout their entitlement period, as failure to do so may result in financial penalties.

If your employee is absent for a long period of time, or their skill set is vital for day-to-day tasks, you may have to look at finding a temporary employee to fill in for them in their absence. This means you may have additional costs to factor in.

As statutory payments are mandatory for qualifying employees, you’ll need to make sure that your strategic and financial plans for your company take this into consideration when decisions are being made.

The more in advance you can plan for these things, the better state your cash flow will be in.

For more information on the updates to statutory payments, please get in touch.