The government has now released its guidance on the extended furlough scheme. The guidance in fact runs to 13 different sets of guidance; but on the whole, it is broadly as expected with a few extras thrown in.
- From 1 November you can claim 80% of an employee’s usual salary for hours not worked, up to a maximum of £2,500 per month
- The employees can be fully furloughed or flexi-furloughed and there is no maximum period of time the furlough agreement can be in place (you should therefore put them in place until 31 March)
- You can claim for employees as long as they were on an RTI submission to HMRC between 20 March and 30 October
- Employers who furloughed employees from 1 November have until 13 November to get a written agreement in place. After that you can only claim from the date the agreement is put in place and not retrospectively
- There is no longer a cap on the number of employees you can furlough, and employees do not need to have been furloughed previously
- Anyone who has been made redundant on or after 23 September can be recalled to work and furloughed
These elements were all known previously.
The method for claiming the money back from HMRC broadly seems the same as previously and you can claim for periods from 1 November from 11 November.
The following are new:
- The government is reviewing whether employers should be eligible to claim furlough for an employee serving notice for claim periods on or after 1 December (in other words if you are planning on redundancies make sure that you give them notice before 1 December – which seems somewhat contrary to the intention of the scheme!)
- From December 2020 HMRC will publish employer names for companies who have made claims under the scheme for the month of December onwards (again this seems like a disincentive to use the scheme)
The scheme does on the face of things look very much like before but with a few little (potentially nasty) elements thrown in for good measure. Hopefully though there won’t be too many more updates or changes!
If you have any queries relating to the scheme, please contact us on 0345 646 0406 or fill in our online enquiry form and a member of our Team will be in touch.