We currently have a member of staff who joined our company in July 2007, who is on probationary period to end of January 2008. Since she has joined our company she has been on sick leave for a majority of the time. Doctor has issued her with a medical certificate which signs her off until the third week of October. As you can imagine, this is having a huge knock on effect on the other members of staff and the productivity of the office. To make matters worse, she is getting SSP, which we have to fork out of our own pockets as HMRC will not reimburse an amount that doesn’t go over the 13% NIC threshold!
We are not sure how long we can continue like this, and just wanted to see how others would deal with this situation. If we wanted to terminate her contract now by giving her 4 weeks notice (as per the Contract), what would the process be? Do we have to follow a certain procedure before her contract can be terminated? Are we within our right to terminate on the grounds of sickness?

Any help would be much appreciated.

John