Fit Note Request Letter Template UK | Employer to Staff

A fit note request letter is a short, formal communication from an employer to an absent employee asking for medical evidence of incapacity once the absence runs beyond the period an employee may cover themselves. In the UK the medical evidence in question is the Statement of Fitness for Work, the form a GP, hospital doctor, nurse, occupational therapist, pharmacist or physiotherapist issues, still widely called a "sick note" and historically known as the Med3. The letter is not the fit note itself. It is the employer's request for one, and its job is to mark the moment the rules change and to put that moment in writing.

The distinction that trips people up is between self-certification and a fit note. For the first 7 calendar days of absence the employee simply confirms they were unwell, often on form SC2 or an employer's own version, with no doctor involved. A fit note is different in kind: a healthcare professional has actually assessed the person and recorded whether they are "not fit for work" or "may be fit for work" subject to adjustments. The request letter is the bridge between those two stages. It should be sent only once the eighth day is reached, never used to pressure someone who is still inside their self-certification window, because asking too early reads as heavy-handed and undermines the trust you are trying to keep. A well-drafted statement of written particulars under section 1 of the ERA 1996 will usually already set out how the business handles sickness evidence, and the letter should echo that policy rather than contradict it.

The architecture sits on three statutes working together. The Employment Rights Act 1996 governs the employment relationship and the fair treatment of absent staff; the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992 and the SSP regulations made under it govern sick pay; and the Equality Act 2010 sits over the top whenever an absence may be linked to a disability. None of these gives an employer a blunt right to demand a doctor's note on day one. The rule is more measured, and getting it right is what separates a defensible request from a clumsy one.

The core entitlement is set out in GOV.UK guidance for employers on fitness to work: where incapacity lasts 7 calendar days or fewer, an employer may accept self-certification verbally, by letter, on form SC2, or on the employer's own equivalent. Where incapacity lasts more than 7 days, the employer may ask the employee for medical evidence, and it is the employer's decision whether evidence is required and what form is acceptable. That is the statutory hook for this letter. The HMRC and DWP position is summarised plainly in the GOV.UK guidance on Statutory Sick Pay and employee fitness to work, which is the source you should anchor any internal policy to.

Two practical cautions matter here. First, you cannot withhold SSP simply because a fit note arrives late: official guidance warns that delays are often caused by an inability to get a GP appointment, which is outside the employee's control. Second, the April 2026 reforms removed the three-day waiting period for SSP, so sick pay can now start from day one, but those reforms did not touch the day-8 fit note rule. The evidence threshold is unchanged. A request letter that conflates "SSP starts sooner" with "I can ask for a note sooner" gets the law wrong. Keep the two ideas separate, and the request stays proportionate and lawful.

The textbook trigger is an absence that has quietly rolled past the seventh calendar day with no return date in sight. The employee self-certified at the start, the week elapsed, and now you need a Statement of Fitness for Work both to continue SSP cleanly and to understand whether a phased return is realistic. Sending the letter on day 8 or shortly after is the proportionate moment, and it signals to payroll that the absence has moved into a documented phase. The second common scenario is a planned conversation about extended sickness where you want the evidence request in writing before a return-to-work meeting, so the discussion starts from a medical baseline rather than guesswork.

A third situation is the recurring short absence that individually never reaches day 8 but collectively disrupts the rota. Here you tread carefully. The letter is for genuine over-7-day absences, not a device to police frequent short ones, and using it that way risks looking punitive. The fourth case is the employee whose note is about to expire and whose doctor has not yet reviewed them again; a polite written prompt keeps the paper trail continuous. Most employers also reach for it when a redundancy or notice process overlaps with a live absence, because mixing the two without clean documentation invites a dispute.

Two edge cases deserve flagging. Where the absence may relate to a disability, the Equality Act 2010 duty to consider reasonable adjustments overrides any rigid "evidence or nothing" stance, so the letter should invite an adjustments conversation rather than just demand paperwork. And where the worker is on a zero-hours arrangement, eligibility for SSP turns on average earnings across the reference period, so the request should be framed around evidence of incapacity, not an assumption that pay is automatic.

• The identification block names the employee, their role, the manager making the request and the relevant dates, so the letter is anchored to a specific absence rather than floating as a generic reminder. It records the first day of incapacity, which is the day the person was too unwell to work, not the day they phoned in, because that date governs when the seventh day falls and when the request becomes legitimate.
• The statement of the trigger point sets out plainly that the absence has passed 7 calendar days and that, under the SSP framework, medical evidence may now be required. It cites the day-8 threshold in neutral language and avoids any suggestion that SSP is conditional on the note arriving promptly, which keeps the request inside the GOV.UK position on late evidence.
• The scope of evidence requested asks specifically for a Statement of Fitness for Work and makes clear you will accept a "may be fit for work" note with adjustments, not only a "not fit for work" one. This wording matters: a note recommending reduced hours or amended duties is an opening for a phased return, and a letter that only contemplates full incapacity closes that door prematurely.
• The confirmation of approved dates and pay turns the letter into a planning instrument. It records the dates currently authorised as sickness absence, notes the SSP position without quoting figures, and confirms what happens next for handovers and cover. This is the clause that ends the "we agreed it in the corridor" argument before it starts.
• The proportionality and data clause confirms you are asking only for the evidence the rules permit and no intrusive clinical detail, which keeps the request defensible if the relationship later sours. A practical private loan or financial arrangement letter follows the same discipline of asking for exactly what is needed and nothing more.

You begin by entering the business details and the employee's name and role, then the date of the first day of incapacity. From there the template calculates the relevant context around the seventh calendar day, so the letter reads as a day-8 request rather than a premature demand, and it adjusts the wording if you indicate the absence may be disability-related. Next you confirm the dates you are treating as authorised sickness absence, which feed the confirmation paragraph that payroll and your rota planner will both rely on. You then choose whether to invite a return-to-work or adjustments conversation, which is sensible whenever an underlying health condition is in play.

The form lets you set a reasonable response window without making it sound like a threat, and it reminds you not to tie SSP to the note's arrival. You finish by selecting the delivery method, email or letter, and the template produces matching wording so the sent version and your file copy say the same thing. The output drops into editable Word for any house-style tweaks and a clean PDF for the personnel file. If you manage absence across a team, the same logic underpins the broader UK leave request and approval templates, so your sickness wording stays consistent with how you handle annual and parental leave.

The most frequent error is sending the request too early, inside the self-certification window, which is both unnecessary and corrosive to trust. An employer who demands a doctor's note on day three has asked for something the rules do not require, and the employee notices. Almost as common is the opposite failure: never confirming the approved dates in writing at all, so payroll processes an estimate, the handover never happens, and the absence becomes a grievance about money that was really a documentation gap. A close cousin is conflating the April 2026 removal of the SSP waiting period with the evidence rule, then writing a letter that asks for a note sooner than the day-8 threshold allows. The reforms changed when pay starts, not when you can ask for medical proof.

Two further mistakes carry real legal risk. The first is treating an absence rigidly when it may be disability-related, ignoring the Equality Act 2010 duty to consider reasonable adjustments and pressing for evidence as if it were a disciplinary matter; that approach is a well-worn route into a discrimination claim. The second is withholding SSP because a fit note arrived late, which GOV.UK guidance specifically warns against, since the delay is usually the GP's diary rather than the employee's conduct. A final, smaller slip is asking for clinical detail you have no need for. Request the fit note, not a diagnosis. The note tells you what you are entitled to know, and nothing on it obliges the worker to disclose more.