As part of the government's plan for the next phase of its response to the Covid-19 outbreak, the Prime Minister recently announced that additional financial support is being provided to people and businesses across the UK.

Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme Extension

The Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme has been extended until 31st March 2021. For claim periods up to January 2021, employee will receive 80% of their current salary for hours not worked, up to a maximum of £2,500. The cap is proportonial to the hours not worked.

The policy will be reviewed in January in order to determine whether employers will be asked to contribute more. As before, the scheme is available to all employers across the UK that meet the eligibility criteria.

The Job Support Scheme has been postponed until the Job Retention Scheme ends.

Additional guidance, including how to claim through an updated claims service, will be published on the HMRC website shortly. 

Eligibility for the scheme

Employers:

• All employers with a UK bank account and UK PAYE schemes are eligible
• Neither the employer nor the employee needs to have previously used the CJRS.
• Partially publicly funded organisations may be eligible where their private revenues have been disrupted. All other eligibility requirements apply to these employers.

Employees

• Employees must be on an employer's PAYE payroll by 23:59 30th October 2020 - a Real Time Information (RTI) submission notifying payment of earnings for that employee to HMRC must have been made on or before 30th October 2020.

*As under the current Job Retention Scheme rules:

• Employees can be on any type of contract. Employers will be able to agree any working arrangements with employees.
• Employers can claim the grant for the hours their employees are not working, calculated by reference to their usual hours worked in a claim period.
• When claiming the CJRS grant for furloughed hours, employers will need to report and claim for a minimum period of 7 consecutive calendar days.
• Employers will need to report hours worked and the usual hours an employee would be expected to work in a claim period.
• For worked hours, employees will be paid by their employer subject to their employment contract and employers will be responsible for paying the tax and NICs due on those amounts.

For more information, please visit the HMRC website here.

This article is for general information purposes. It is not addressed to any specific parties and does not constitute advice (legal or otherwise) to any person.