Key Post Illness Benefit

Brendan Burgess

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The Citizens Information Guide to Illness benefit is very good.

A few questions though.

1) Is there no minimum period? If someone is out sick for one day, can they claim illness benefit?

2) Does it matter if your employer pays you while out sick?

If you are not entitled to sick pay from work you may get Illness Benefit ...

It seems to me that you get it whether you get paid by your employer or not. However, your employer might reduce your salary by the amount of Benefit.

3) Can an employer insist on it being paid over to them?

Brendan
 
Like Jobseekers Benefit, you do not receive payment for the first three days of illness. You can receive Illness Benefit regardless of whether your employer pays you or not.

Employers cannot insist on you paying your benefit to them. However, your employer is not legally bound to pay you while out sick. Therefore, these type of arrangements, where employers pay sick pay and employees refund Illness Benefit to them are by agreement.
 
thanks Milic

So what about someone who takes say 8 sick days throughout a year. Can he claim 5 of them?

How are claims linked?
 
Unsure about how claims link, Will research further and report to the board. Certainly someone taking 8 single days would not qualify. You would have to be out for at least 4 days initially before you qualify. Any subsequent cliams would have to be within a certain period (perhars 13 weeks) before linking to the first claim.
 
Any two such subsequent periods of incapacity within that period of interruption of employment, not separated by a period of more than 13 weeks, shall be treated as one period of incapacity for work. This is to ensure that persons who find themselves unfit to continue working can revert to the original benefit to which they were entitled without the need to re-qualify.
That certainly did not happen when I made 2 IB claims within 13 weeks of each other. 3 waiting days were enforced on each claim.
 
In general, Illness Benefit claims link only if they are within 3 days.

The quote referred to by bond-007 applies to certain small categories of IB claims e.g. transferring to Illness Benefit from Carers Benefit.
 
In general, Illness Benefit claims link only if they are within 3 days.
Fair enough.
The quote referred to by bond-007 applies to certain small categories of IB claims e.g. transferring to Illness Benefit from Carers Benefit.
My bad. Sorry.
 
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