The 2026/27 payroll numbers your run should already be using

Half the tax year has gone. If something in your payroll was not updated in April, it has now been wrong six times. This is the list to check against, taken from HMRC’s rates and thresholds for employers 2026 to 2027. Rates do change in-year, so confirm against that page before you act on any figure here.

Minimum wage, from 1 April 2026

• National Living Wage, 21 and over: £12.71 an hour
• 18 to 20: £10.85
• 16 to 17: £8.00
• Apprentice rate: £8.00
• Accommodation offset: £11.10 a day

Most underpayment is not a wrong rate. It is a right rate applied to the wrong hours: unpaid handover time, a uniform deduction, a salary that was fine until someone’s hours crept up, a birthday that moved someone into the next band mid-month.

Statutory Sick Pay, from 6 April 2026

The largest change to a small employer’s payroll this year.

• Paid from the first day of sickness. The three waiting days have gone.
• No lower earnings limit. Your lowest-paid and part-time staff now qualify.
• £123.25 a week, or 80% of average weekly earnings, whichever is lower.

The 80% rule means SSP is now a calculation for low earners rather than a flat rate. If your sick pay figures since April are all the same number, check them.

Employer National Insurance

• Rate: 15% on earnings above the secondary threshold
• Secondary threshold: £96 a week, £5,000 a year
• Employment Allowance: £10,500

Statutory parental pay

Statutory maternity, paternity, adoption and neonatal care pay are £194.32 a week, or 90% of average weekly earnings if that is lower. Paternity leave itself became a day-one right on 6 April 2026.

Workplace pensions

Unchanged for 2026/27. The earnings trigger for auto-enrolment stays at £10,000 and the qualifying earnings band at £6,240 to £50,270.

Coming in April 2027: payrolling benefits in kind

Mandatory reporting of benefits through payroll is now phased, according to HMRC’s guidance.

• 6 April 2027: company cars, car fuel, vans, van fuel and employer-provided medical benefits.
• 6 April 2028: most other benefits.
• Loans and living accommodation stay voluntary for now.

If you provide a company car or private medical cover, the benefit will need a cash equivalent in the pay run from next April rather than on a P11D after the year ends. The time to collect that data is this winter.

A ten-minute check

• Is anyone aged 21 or over on less than £12.71 for every hour worked?
• Did everyone who was off sick since April get SSP from day one?
• Is your Employment Allowance claimed at £10,500?
• Do you have a list of every benefit in kind you provide, and who gets it?

The payroll agent runs these checks before every run and holds it until a named person approves. The accounting agent then turns the approved run into the journal and the amounts due to HMRC.