Changes were made late Friday afternoon to scheme, meaning that you will no longer be able to claim furlough from 1 December 2020 for any days when an employee is serving statutory or contractual notice, including resignation and retirement. It is however still possible to claim furlough for statutory notice periods up to 1 December 2020, it still remains unclear if you can claim for (longer) contractual periods.
Under the extension you can claim furlough for any employee that was included on an RTI submission on or before 30 October 2020. This also includes employees that were made redundant or stopped working for you after 23 September 2020 and you have subsequently re-employed them.
There is no maximum number of employees that you can include on a claim from 1 November 2020.
Employee’s contracted a fixed number of hours
The reference period for calculating furlough pay remains the last pay period ending on or before 19 March 2020. For employees that you have employed since this date the reference period for the extension to the scheme will be the last pay period prior ending on or before 30 October 2020.
Employee’s with variable hours
For variable hours workers you will need to calculate ‘usual hours’ based on the higher of either:
- the average number of hours worked in the tax year 2019 to 2020
- the corresponding calendar period in the tax year 2019 to 2020
For new employees that were not working for you in 2019/20 you will need to calculate the average number of hours worked from 6 April 2020 up to the employee’s first day spent on furlough on or after 1 November 2020.
Please visit https://www.gov.uk/guidance/claim-for-wage-costs-through-the-coronavirus-job-retention-scheme for more detail and information.
If you have any questions, or, would like us to calculate your furlough claims for you, then please get in touch.
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