Following on from our previous article here, on 10 November 2020 the Government published its guidance on the extended Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS). The full guidance can be found here. Buried within its midst are two important points employers need to be aware of.

  1. In the section ‘Check which employees you can put on furlough to use the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme’, the guidance states that employers can continue to claim for employees serving a statutory notice period but the grant cannot be used to substitute redundancy payments. The Government is “reviewing whether employers should be eligible to claim for employees serving contractual or statutory notice periods and will change the approach for claim periods starting on or after 1 December 2020, with further guidance published in late November.” This means that employers considering dismissing employees (whether for redundancy or otherwise) should give notice before 1 December 2020 if they do not want to risk being unable to claim furlough pay for those employees during their notice period. If an employee is being made redundant, their statutory redundancy and statutory notice pay should be based on their normal wage, subject to the statutory weekly earnings cap on redundancy payments and not their reduced wage under the CJRS. An employer claiming for a furloughed employee during their notice period will therefore need to top up the employee’s notice pay by 20% to ensure they are paid their normal wage.
  2. In the section ‘Check if you can claim for your employees’ wages through the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme’, the guidance states that “From December 2020, HMRC will publish employer names for companies and Limited Liability Partnerships (LLPs), the company registration number of those who have made claims under the scheme for the month of December onwards”. This means that HMRC will publicly name and potentially shame those employers using the extended taxpayer funded CJRS. This looks like an attempt by the Government to reign in and clamp down hard on some employers who don’t genuinely need to be making use of the extended CJRS. Employers need to plan for this from a reputational and PR standpoint after the end of this month, particularly those which are household names or have links to high profile wealthy celebrities. One only needs to look at the public backlash Victoria Beckham received when she furloughed her staff at her fashion label at the beginning of the first lockdown period and then swiftly reversed that decision as a result. Multi-billion pound Spurs and Liverpool football clubs also did the same with its non-playing staff. A distinction needs to be drawn between those employers deemed to be “on the take” compared to those who genuinely are in financial dire straits and need to use the extended CJRS in order to survive the pandemic. In our view, those employers should not be publicly named and shamed. The main problem with the CJRS is that it is not effectively means tested because there was not time to do so when it was introduced and therefore it relies on the moral and ethical compass and values of employers making claims under it to do the right thing.

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