An employee has an operation which will take 10 working days recovery before returning to work.
He has 5 days holiday remaining which he will take at full pay. The remaining 5 days will be taken as sick/unable to work.
How many days SSP are due to be paid?
My assumption is 5 days SSP and 5 days holiday, based on PIW = 14 calendar days from date of operation on first day of his holiday, the waiting days are the first 3 days of his holiday and his qualifying days are days 6 to 10 of his normal working week (Mon-Fri).
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Interesting point
A Qualifying Day is defined as a day on which the employee normally works or is contracted to work. Your argument is based on the assumption that a day on holiday is one on which the employee normally works or is contracted to work. I think a day's holiday cannot be a normal working day or hence, a qualifying day of sickness.
If the otherwise unpaid week of sickness were to be taken before the week of holiday, I am sure you will agree that Mon-Wed of the first week would be waiting days and SSP would only be due for 2 days. It would be a nonsense that simply reversing the order by taking holiday before sickness absence could produce a different result - 5 days of paid SSP.
2 or 7
The answer is either 2 days or 7 days. If you take a holiday as a qualifying day (which the first 3 waiting days in the post assumes), the employee has 10 qualifying days and so has 3 waiting days and 7 SSP days. If you don't treat holiday as a qualifying day, it's 3 waiting days and 2 SSP days.
I agree that a holiday isn't a qualifying day, which leads to 2 days SSP. 5 days SSP is definitely not the answer.