Can ChatGPT tell me if I qualify for Statutory Sick Pay?

Partly. It can organise your facts and give a provisional assessment against GOV.UK guidance, but your employer or payroll team must confirm the decision using its records.

What information do I need to check Statutory Sick Pay?

Gather your employment status, start date, pay and pay frequency, sickness dates, linked sickness periods, notification to your employer and any explanation for a refusal. Payslips and written messages from your employer are more useful than an estimate from memory.

Why has my employer said I am not entitled to Statutory Sick Pay?

The reason may depend on facts such as your employment arrangement, pay records, sickness dates or whether separate absences are treated as linked. Ask payroll to give the rule and facts behind its decision, then compare them with current GOV.UK guidance.

What should I do if my employer refuses Statutory Sick Pay?

Ask payroll for the decision and calculation in writing, and keep your payslips, sickness records and messages. This is not professional advice. A serious dispute needs Citizens Advice, an employment adviser or a solicitor.

PARTLY

As of 13 August 2026, AI can only partly check your Statutory Sick Pay eligibility.

This still needs a person who signs their name to it.

Can you do it?

5 minutesto a draft.

30 minutesto something you’d act on.

Cost, all in£0

Skill neededchat-fluent

Who has to check ita professional

What the alternative costsThe available tool data gives no price for a specialist Statutory Sick Pay eligibility service.

If this goes wrong: you accept an incorrect answer, miss pay you may be owed or raise the wrong point with your employer.

What to actually do

Hand it to a person
The route this page recommends
Someone with a licence or accountable authority has to sign this before it counts.
Use a tool built for this
Second choice

Do it yourself

The distant third

A chat interface, chat-fluent skill, and roughly 30 minutes until you can act on the result.

How to actually do it

Open the current Statutory Sick Pay guidance on GOV.UK and keep it beside the chatbot.
Gather your recent payslips, contract or offer letter, employment start date, sickness dates and any message from your employer about sick pay.
Remove your National Insurance number, bank details and other unnecessary personal identifiers, then paste the facts into the prompt.
Ask the chatbot to use current GOV.UK guidance and to list missing facts before giving its provisional conclusion.
Compare every important rule and conclusion with the GOV.UK page, your payslips and the wording from your employer, correcting any mismatch in the chatbot's answer.
Send the chatbot's list of unresolved questions to your employer or payroll team and ask them to confirm your eligibility, payment dates and the reason for any refusal.
If the employer and GOV.UK guidance do not resolve the dispute, take your payslips and correspondence to Citizens Advice, an employment adviser or a solicitor.

Prompt

Check my possible eligibility for UK Statutory Sick Pay using the current GOV.UK guidance, not general memory. Treat this as a provisional assessment, not a final decision. Ask me for any missing facts before reaching a conclusion.

My facts:
- Employment status and type: [for example, employee, agency worker, or other]
- Employer location within the UK: [England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland]
- Employment start date or length of employment: [details]
- Whether I am still employed: [yes or no]
- Gross pay and pay frequency: [details from recent payslips]
- Dates I was unable to work: [dates or approximate periods]
- Whether the sickness periods were linked or separated by periods of work: [details]
- Whether I told my employer promptly: [yes, no or unsure]
- Whether my employer has said I am not eligible, and their reason: [paste their wording]
- Any relevant benefit, pregnancy or employment details: [details or none]

Give me:
1. The facts that support or undermine possible eligibility.
2. Any missing facts that could change the result.
3. A plain conclusion labelled likely eligible, likely not eligible, or cannot tell yet.
4. The specific current GOV.UK page or rule supporting each important point, with links where available.
5. Questions to send to my employer or payroll team.

Do not invent earnings, dates or rules. Do not diagnose illness. Do not treat your answer as a decision by my employer, and say clearly when I need an employment adviser, Citizens Advice or a solicitor.

Open it prefilled in ChatGPT or Claude, or copy it into Gemini, which takes no prefill link.

What it gets wrong

AI cannot see your employer's payroll records, sickness records or internal decision about your pay.
AI cannot reliably resolve linked sickness periods, unusual employment arrangements or missing payroll facts without the relevant records.
AI cannot guarantee that its explanation reflects the current SSP rules unless you check each important point against GOV.UK.
AI cannot make your employer pay SSP or take responsibility for the decision.
AI cannot replace an employment adviser or solicitor when your employer disputes the facts or you need to challenge a refusal.

What caps this at PARTLY: real time truth, judgement under ambiguity and stakes of error.

How we scored this

Five axes, each scored nought to two by hand: ten means AI carries the task cleanly, and the thresholds that turn a total into YES, PARTLY or NO are published in the methodology. Each axis name links to its definition.

Axis	Score (0–2)
Output	2
Inputs	1
Verification	1
Liability	1
Effort delta	2
Total	7 / 10

The methodology and its thresholds are published in full.

FAQ

Can ChatGPT tell me if I qualify for Statutory Sick Pay?: Partly. It can organise your facts and give a provisional assessment against GOV.UK guidance, but your employer or payroll team must confirm the decision using its records.
What information do I need to check Statutory Sick Pay?: Gather your employment status, start date, pay and pay frequency, sickness dates, linked sickness periods, notification to your employer and any explanation for a refusal. Payslips and written messages from your employer are more useful than an estimate from memory.
Why has my employer said I am not entitled to Statutory Sick Pay?: The reason may depend on facts such as your employment arrangement, pay records, sickness dates or whether separate absences are treated as linked. Ask payroll to give the rule and facts behind its decision, then compare them with current GOV.UK guidance.
What should I do if my employer refuses Statutory Sick Pay?: Ask payroll for the decision and calculation in writing, and keep your payslips, sickness records and messages. This is not professional advice. A serious dispute needs Citizens Advice, an employment adviser or a solicitor.

Nearby answers

All Benefits & entitlements rulings

Assessed by gpt-5.6-luna (gpt-5.6-luna) on 2026-08-13, second-checked by an independent model. Wrong somewhere? Email [email protected] and it gets re-checked.

The newsletter

AI news, new answers and product picks, straight to your inbox.