Guarantee pay when there is no work (UK)

A warehouse whose picking system fails, a call centre whose platform goes down, a site where automation has cut the work available: on days like these an employer may send people home. Where the contract does not already pay for those days, the law gives employees a small statutory payment called guarantee pay. It is modest, but payroll and rota software often has no category for it, so it is easy to miss.

The short answer: an employee who would normally be required to work on a day, but is given no work at all for the whole of that day because of a fall in the employer's need for their kind of work or another occurrence affecting the normal running of the business, is entitled to a guarantee payment (Employment Rights Act 1996, s28). Since 6 April 2026 it is capped at £41 a day, for no more than five days in any three months (s31).

When the right applies

The day must be one on which the employee would normally be required to work under their contract, and they must be given no work throughout it (s28(1)). The reason must be either a diminution in the requirements of the business for work of the kind the employee does, or any other occurrence affecting the normal working of the business in relation to that work. A system outage, a failed software rollout or a drop in work after automation can fall within those words, depending on the facts. A day means midnight to midnight; a shift that crosses midnight counts as falling on the day with the longer part (s28(4) and (5)). If the employee is given some work on the day, it is not a workless day.

Who is excluded

• Employees with less than one month's continuous employment ending with the day before the workless day (s29(1)).
• Days without work because of a strike, lock-out or other industrial action involving any employee of the employer or an associated employer (s29(3)).
• Days on which the employer offered suitable alternative work, even outside the employee's usual duties, and the employee unreasonably refused it (s29(4)).
• Employees who do not comply with reasonable requirements the employer imposes to make sure their services are available, such as being contactable (s29(5)).
• Employees covered by a collective agreement or agricultural wages order that has been given an exemption order by the Secretary of State (s35).

How much

The payment is the number of normal working hours on the day multiplied by the guaranteed hourly rate, which is a week's pay divided by normal weekly hours. Where hours vary, the divisor is the average over the last 12 complete weeks (s30). If there are no normal working hours on that day, nothing is due. The amount for any day cannot exceed £41, a figure substituted from 6 April 2026 by the Employment Rights (Increase of Limits) Order 2026 (s31(1)). Payment is limited to the number of days the employee normally works in a week, up to five, in any period of three months (s31(2) to (4)). In practice that means at most £205 in a three-month period.

Guarantee pay is a floor, not a replacement for the contract. Any contractual pay for a workless day counts towards the guarantee payment, and the guarantee payment counts towards any contractual pay for that day (s32). So an employee whose contract pays them in full for a day sent home receives nothing extra; the statutory payment matters where the contract allows unpaid lay-off.

If it is not paid

An employee can complain to an employment tribunal that the employer failed to pay all or part of a guarantee payment. The tribunal orders the employer to pay the amount due (s34). The time limit runs from the workless day itself. Where the matter arose on or after 1 October 2026, it is six months, up from three, with an extension for early conciliation through Acas.

Practical steps

• Employers: check what contracts say about pay for days without work, and add a "workless day" pay code that applies the hourly rate, the £41 cap and the five-day limit per three months, and record any alternative work offered. Keep these days out of attendance and performance scores.
• Employees: keep a note of each day you were sent home or told not to come in, and why. Ask for guarantee pay in writing if it does not appear on your payslip. A day without work is not sickness, so it should not be logged as sick leave. If the lack of work turns into job losses, see redundancy pay, and if it lasts for weeks, lay-off and short-time; for rota changes made by software, see scheduling and shifts.

These sections extend to England, Wales and Scotland. This page is general information on the law in Great Britain as at 1 November 2026, not legal advice.