06-11-2020

The 5th of November has seen Rishi Sunak give more details on and further changes to the extension of the Job Retention Scheme (CJRS) which will have a major effect on employers and payroll departments alike. As per the initial announcements at the weekend, the scheme will continue after the initial end date of the 31st of October and will therefore apply to any claims from the 1st of November. This therefore is initial information for further guidance promised due to be published on the 10th of November. There will be a further review for guidance from February 2021 onwards.

The government had already confirmed an extension to the CJRS to support individuals and businesses who are impacted by disruption caused by coronavirus for November or the period of the further English lock down that was announced by Boris Johnson on Saturday. Today however, it was confirmed that this will remain open until 31 March 2021. Because of these changes, both the Job Support Scheme and the Job Retention Bonus are postponed, and further information will be provided at a later date if applicable. The scheme is also UK wide.

For claim periods running to January 2021, employees will receive 80% of their usual salary for hours not worked, up to a maximum of £2,500 per month. The £2,500 cap is proportional to the hours not worked. This is in line with the rules that were in place for August this year. As such the employer will still be liable for their costs such as National Insurance and Pension contributions. As mentioned, the government will then review the policy in January to decide whether economic circumstances are improving enough to ask employers to contribute more.

HMRC have confirmed that claims can be made by employers across the UK and do not need to have used the CJRS previously and can be opened or closed unlike the previously announced Job Support Scheme (JSS). As with the previous iteration of the CJRS, publicly funded organisations will not use the scheme, but partially publicly funded organisations may be eligible where their private revenues have been disrupted. All other previous CJRS eligibility requirements also apply to these employers.

Employers can claim for employees who were employed and on their PAYE payroll on or by the 30th of October 2020. The employer must have also made a PAYE Real Time Information (RTI) submission including the employee to HMRC between the 20th of March 2020 and the 30th of October 2020, notifying a payment of earnings for that employee.

Further details can be found here.


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