Personal Sick Pay: the cover most self-employed tradespeople have never heard of
Statutory Sick Pay does not apply to the self-employed. For a lot of tradespeople that means the income stops the same day the work does.
Employees have a floor to land on. Statutory Sick Pay is modest — £123.25 a week for the 2026/27 tax year — but it exists, and many employers top it up for months. Sole traders, CIS subcontractors and gig drivers have none of that. The income stops immediately, and the bills do not.
That is the gap Personal Sick Pay was built for. Structurally it is income protection: a monthly benefit while illness or injury stops you working, usually on an own-occupation basis. The practical difference is the waiting period. Standard income protection commonly starts at one month, and for some manual occupations carries a three-month minimum. Personal Sick Pay plans run from a single day.
The trade-off is price: the shorter the wait, the higher the premium per pound of benefit. Most self-employed clients we speak to land somewhere sensible in the middle — a one or two week wait that still catches a real injury quickly without paying for instant cover they would rarely use. The right answer depends on how much cash you could genuinely live on before the money had to arrive.
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