HR Articles

An urgent question was directed at the Chancellor at 12.30pm...

Furlough leave has not been defined by UK statute (yet). However, it is essentially a new mechanism that the UK government has implemented to avoid employers making employees redundant during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Chancellor has announced the government package to support jobs and incomes during the public health emergency caused by the Coronavirus pandemic.

We are in unprecedented times. The Government has advised measures of social distancing including the avoidance of bars, pubs and restaurants. Thousands of businesses will be forced to close due to a downturn in trade or staff being off unwell or in isolation.We all need to pull together and think flexibly and sustainably. This will have to be a group effort. Employees may need to agree a reduction in pay now to try and retain their roles in the long run. Businesses may have to make redundancies and conduct redundancy processes over a very short space of time to try and stay afloat.

On the 13th April 2020 the Statutory Sick Pay (General) (Coronavirus Amendment) Regulations 2020 comes into force. This follows the announcements from Rishi Sunak’s inaugural budget outlined earlier this week; “the best way to support people is to protect their jobs – and we do that by supporting our businesses”.

It was announced yesterday that the changes to IR35 legislation due to come into force in April this year have been delayed...

The Prime Minister confirmed yesterday that the UK will be moving into the ‘delay phase’ of its plan to tackle coronavirus.

There were a number of measures introduced in the budget to try to protect businesses and employees against the impact of Coronavirus.

In Northern Lights Solutions Ltd v HMRC, a contractor has lost his appeal against a tax bill of £70,000 after the Tribunal ruled the “overarching degree of control” meant he was a “disguised employee”.

With the coronavirus risk level in the UK being raised to moderate, we have set out some of the issues employers may be faced with and the steps they may want to consider now to prepare for the risk of employees being exposed to, or contracting, the virus.