New details and deadlines for furlough claims from November

Changes to the original Furlough from November

Other employees may be now eligible for CJRS.3 as they either:

had earnings for 2019/20 reported on a full payment submission (FPS) from 20 March 2020 to 19 April 2020 (19 April being the deadline for 2019/20 submissions); or had earnings for 2020/21 reported on a full payment submission from 6 April 2020 to 30 October 2020

Rehires

Individuals who had a date of leaving reported after the 23 September 2020 can be reinstated if the employer so chooses.

Owner managed businesses

Directors who reported their annual payment for 2019/20 to HMRC after 19 March 2020 will now be included in CJRS.3 having been excluded up until 31 October.

The rate of earnings reported in the period from 20 March to 30 October 2020 can be claimed, subject to the £2,500 monthly pay cap. Remember this £2,500 cap is pro-rated to the number of furloughed hours as a proportion of usual hours.

Claim deadlines

The original CJRS will close on 31 October 2020, and the extension to the scheme will begin on 1 November 2020.

Employers will have the opportunity to claim from 8am on Wednesday 11 November 2020.

Claims that relate to November 2020 must be submitted by no later than 14 December 2020, and claims relating to each subsequent month should be sent by day 14 of the following month. Businesses are reminded that claims up to and including 31 October 2020 need to be submitted by 30 November 2020.

Claims will be able to be made in advance (I assume as now 14 days before payday) and will pay out within six days.

Employers are not required to submit their RTI returns before making a claim, so we appear to have returned to the ‘pay now check later’ model.

Claim Periods

Claim periods will cover a minimum of seven days and we assume orphan periods will be a feature of the new scheme, where a week split is over two calendar months, meaning there will be less than seven days in the claims. This should be okay as long as it’s preceded or followed by a seven day period of furlough.

Contract changes

The government has recognised that it has been impossible to put in place furlough agreements from 1 November, given that employers were not aware what the reference pay period would be. Contract changes can be backdated to 1 November 2020 but must be issued by 13 November 2020, but as the new guidance is promised on 10 November this could be challenging.

Schemes scrapped

The job support scheme will not be coming into effect this tax year and the job retention bonus has been scrapped.