COVID Response
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As the Prime Minister announced a further national lockdown from Thursday 5th November, subject to Parliaments’ agreement, for four weeks. Here are the details as they currently stand. If you would like a template letter that you can adapt and use for staff depending on whether staff are fully furloughed, or flexi furloughed where they work part time, please contact us.
Employers small or large, charitable or non-profit, are eligible for the extended Job Retention Scheme, which will continue for a further month, at which point it will be reviewed. HMRC has confirmed that the current CJRS furlough scheme will be extended until ‘December’ and will revert back to the financial levels offered in August. It will then be replaced by the Job Support Scheme (JSS).
Businesses will have flexibility to bring furloughed employees back to work on a part time basis or furlough them full-time, and will only be asked to cover National Insurance and employer pension contributions (unless the employee has opted out) which, for the average claim, accounts for just 5% of total employment costs.
This will still be flexible furlough, so employees can either be fully furloughed or flexi furloughed where they work part time.
Under the CJRS scheme, which will operate from 1st November 2020, HMRC will fund 80% of an employee’s salary up to £2,500 a month. Employers can top up employee’s salaries if they want to.
It is not necessary for either the employer or the employee to have used the CJRS scheme before and to qualify an employee (widely defined as under the current scheme) must be on an employer’s PAYE payroll by 23:59 on 30 October 2020 and a RTI submission to HMRC must have been made on or before this date.
There will be some conditions set with the detailed guidance – for instance that employees cannot be serving any notice period – this is one of the new conditions imposed under the JSS.
The Job Support Scheme, which was scheduled to come in on Sunday 1st November, has been postponed until the furlough scheme ends.
Additional guidance will be set out shortly. For the latest information please use this link.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/furlough-scheme-extended-and-further-economic-support-announced
As always if you would like further information or assistance regarding this or any other issue, please contact us.
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