Further to our blog earlier this month regarding the announcement that the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (known to most as furlough leave) is being extended to 31^st March 2020 (available to read here), further government guidance has been issued on the detail of the extended furlough scheme.

Here are our Top 5 facts that employers should be aware of:

• From 1^st December 2020, employers cannot claim for any days when the employee is serving a contractual or statutory notice period for the employer.  This applies in resignation and retirement situations, as well as redundancy.

• Employers do not need to have previously claimed for an employee to claim furlough under the extended scheme (i.e. after 1^st November 2020), so long as the employee was employed on 30^th October 2020 and had been paid through payroll at some point between 20^th March and 30^th October 2020. Please see the last blog for different reference periods for calculating claims.

• The Job Retention Bonus has been withdrawn, meaning that the £1000 payment per eligible employee that employers may have been banking on in February has been put on hold, pending review.

• From 1 December 2020, HMRC have stated that they intend to publish the names of Companies/businesses who access the scheme (presumably as a measure to try and reduce fraudulent claims).

• Employers will need a new written agreement in place with any employees they wish to furlough under the extended scheme.  This documentation should be put in place in advance of an employee starting a new period of furlough leave.  However, employers who arranged documentation by 13^th November 2020 are able to retrospectively claim for the period from 1^st November 2020.

We are also anticipating further changes to the scheme from 1 February, these changes are yet to be qualified by the government (we are getting used to this!).

This information is correct at the time of publication, but we encourage you to check government guidance or our blog page regularly (here:  https://viewhr.co.uk/blog/) for updates, as government guidance is changing frequently at the moment.

If you are an employer and have any queries about furlough leave or would like help issuing the relevant documentation to employees, please do not hesitate to get in touch with a member of the ViewHR team for a discussion.