Clifford Chance

Coronavirus: UK job retention scheme, remuneration and employees

31 March 2020

As well as the real and devastating impact of Covid-19 on people’s health and lives, it is also clearly creating disorder for businesses, impacting on operations and causing disruption across markets.

The UK government has introduced a number of unprecedented measures to help employers, including the Covid-19 Job Retention Scheme designed to alleviate pressure on payroll costs. Further guidance was published by the UK government on 26 March 2020 bringing some much needed clarity on the detail of the scheme.

This note focuses on the UK government’s scheme for employees but there is of course a similar scheme for self-employed individuals. There are also other schemes being put in place by governments globally and it is worth any global employer considering locally available schemes.

Under the UK scheme, all UK employers will be able to access support to continue paying part of wage costs for individuals who would otherwise have been laid off during the current crisis. HMRC is still working hard on setting up an online system for reimbursement expected to be in place during April.

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