The details of the extension to the furlough scheme have been announced…

The Treasury have withdrawn the Job Support Scheme and so all this information can be ignored for the moment.  The extension to the CJRS is to operate in a very similar way to the earlier furlough scheme and the claims process will the the same.

For Clearways Accountants clients, all claims will be made by month although the Government allows claims to be made for shorter periods if the payroll is run weekly or fortnightly within a calendar month.

The overview of furlough (part 2):

  • The employer can claim 80% of wages for hours not worked for November to January, with the cap set at £2,500
  • The employer must pay 100% of wages for time worked plus 80% for hours not worked (covered by the furlough grant from the Government)
  • The employer will have to pay any employer’s national insurance and pension contributions (auto enrolment)
  • Employees must have been on payroll at 30 October 2020 (there are special rules if the employer made staff redundant before October, see HMRC for more details)
  • The employer does not have to have claimed under the scheme that ran over the summer
  • New employees can benefit
  • The reference pay that is used to calculate the grant is unchanged if a claim has already been made for an employee (i.e. February 2020 or average for the year 2019-20; see earlier blogs for the details)
  • The reference pay for new claimants is October 2020 (see HMRC if you have employees working flexible hours)
  • There is no job retention bonus
  • There will be a review of the scheme in January and future levels of support will be re-assessed at that time.
  • There are monthly deadlines for claims which must be submitted on or within 14 days of the month end.  So the November claim must be submitted by the 14th December.

If you are a Clearways Accountants payroll client we will continue to send out monthly newsletters asking for your working/ not working data each month.  Please respond promptly to these newsletters as any delay may result in a claim being out of time.