The UK Government has announced a new Jobs Support Scheme that follows on support from the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme
When the coronavirus pandemic hit, part of the UK Government's initial response was Coronavirus Job Rention Scheme, which offered employers up to 80% of the wages for employees who had to be furloughed because they could no longer do their jobs due to the pandemic. The aim was to help retain jobs and avoid the mandatory redundancies and mass unemployment that have hit the US.
The furlough scheme was designed as a short-term economic safeguard and the level of support is currently decreasing each month, with the scheme set to on October 31st. With a second wave about to hit, there have been calls for the government to renew the scheme to keep people employed throughout the winter months.
Instead, the UK Government has announced a replacement scheme called the Jobs Support Scheme that offers a much lower level of support to employees and is designed to get people back to work. Under the new scheme, employees must work at least a third of their normal working hours and be paid by their employer for those hours. For the remaining unworked hours, the government will pay a third of the wages (capped at £697.92 per month) and your employer is required to pay at least another third.
As an example, an employee who earns £1,800 per month for 40 hours of work must do at least 13.3 hours of work for which they are paid £600 by their employer. The government will then pay a grant of £400 (a third of the unworked hours) and the employer must match this by paying another £400 for another third. The result is that staff will be paid at least 77% of their full wages, with most of the cost being on the employer.
This scheme is designed to support businesses that are able to get back to partial capacity, so it won't help any of those still on the furlough scheme who haven't already been able to return to partial working hours. A one-off payment of £1,000 will be paid to businesses for each furloughed employee that they keep on until at least the end of January, in addition to recently announced support for employment of apprentices.
Source: BBC News
