News & Insights

With a resurgence of the Coronavirus and the furlough scheme ending on 31 October, Rishi Sunak has announced plans for a Job Support Scheme, allowing workers to get 3/4 of their normal salaries for 6 months, starting from November.

The Scheme is aimed at ‘viable jobs’ as opposed to jobs that only exist because the government is continuing to subsidise the wages and will apply to all SMEs and larger business which have lost turnover during the crisis. It will be open to all UK employers, even if they didn’t use the furlough scheme. However, it is worth noting the employee must not be on a redundancy notice, which is not the same as the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, where the scheme did pay out for employees working their redundancy notice.

How will the scheme work?

• To be eligible employees must work a minimum of 33% of their normal hours and must also have been on the employer’s Real Time Information submission on or before 23 September 2020
• Working patterns can vary, but each short-time working arrangement must cover a minimum period of seven days
• The minimum 33% threshold hours for which an employee must work may be increased in months 4-6 of the scheme
• Employers will pay the employee for the hours they work
• For the remaining hours (ie. 67%) not worked the government and employer pay 1/3 wages each – meaning employees working 33% of their hours will receive at least 77% of their pay (33% worked, 22% government topped up and 22% employer topped up from remaining hours)
• The Government grant will be capped at £697.92 per month/employee but please note this will not cover Class 1 employer NIC or pension contributions, they remain payable by the employer
• The government’s grant ‘usual wages’ will follow a “similar” methodology to the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme

If your business needs support implementing the Job Support Scheme then please contact our team today and we will be happy to help.