Over the weekend the Government released updated guidance in relation to the Job Retention Scheme in advance of the HMRC furlough portal being released today.
The various updates have clarified some of the outstanding points that previous guidance had not addressed.
Extension to Furlough Scheme
The Job Retention Scheme has been extended from the intended end date of 31st of May 2020 until the end of June. There has been some commentary on this decision being down to the fact that there were a number of large businesses due to commence their 45 days’ collective redundancy consultation on Friday, so as not to fall foul of the collective redundancy rules if they required to make more than 100 employees redundant at the original end date (31st May 2020) of the furlough scheme.
Annual Leave
HMRC has provided some amount of clarity in relation to the topic of annual leave and furlough. As we predicted, the Government guidance for employees’ has confirmed that it is possible for those who have annual leave to take, to utilise this whilst they are on furlough.
Again as suggested in or previous updates, the Government have confirmed that any annual leave taken during furlough should be at 100% of the employee’s normal pay. Therefore, for those employee’s on furlough who take annual leave, employers will be required to top up their furlough salary to meet the 100% pay requirement.
The update does not specify whether an employer can require an employee to take annual leave whilst on furlough however hopefully now that we have some guidance the answer to this will follow.
SSP
On Sunday evening the Government updated their guidance in relation to Statutory Sick Pay. The HMRC statutory payments manual was updated to clarify that employees do not qualify for SSP if they are on furlough.
Additionally, the Government’s Statutory Sick Pay (General) (Coronavirus Amendment) (No.3) Regulations 2020 provide that a person is deemed to be incapable of work if they are unable to work because they fall within the extremely vulnerable category and they have been advised to shield. These regulations were announced on 16th of April and it is not clear whether they will be able to be applied retrospectively.
Portal
The Job Retention Scheme portal went live this morning at 5.30 and some employers have already been able to make claims, however as can be expected with the likely amount of traffic the website will be experiencing there has been a number of teething issues. These include the online calculator producing inaccurate results (this tool has been removed from the website at the moment) and the portal not allowing overlapping furlough periods in the same month.
Hopefully these issues can be resolved over the course of the day and the portal will start to operate more smoothly or further guidance on how to use it is released.
