Employment Newsletter for Businesses

COVID & Furlough Scheme

March 2020 saw us enter the first lockdown due to Coronavirus with many businesses having to close and make decisions to furlough their staff to save their business in the long term and ensure their staff received payment from the Government furlough scheme.

Many businesses had to review their business needs for the longer term and make difficult decisions, which included redundancies.

With COVID-19 continuing to affect our lives and businesses and with the current furlough scheme due to end at the end of April this year, it is unfortunate but likely to continue to affect employers and employees.

At Kerseys Solicitors, we want to make the process of finalising your Agreement as straight forward as possible. We would review your documents prior to the virtual/telephone meeting to ensure the meeting is a proactive meeting that will assist in moving your business forward and ensure that your business is safeguarded for the future.

3 March – date of 2021 Budget

6 April 2021 – Minimum Wage new rates:
NLW for workers aged 23 and over will be £8.91 per hour (note that the NLW has been extended to 23 and 24-year-olds for the first time).
NMW will increase for ages 21 and 22 – from £8.20 to £8.36 per hour, for ages 18 to 20 – from £6.45 to £6.56 per hour and for ages 16 and 17 – from £4.55 £4.62 per hour.

The Apprentice rate will increase from £4.15 to £4.30 per hour.

6 April 2021, new legislation will amend the current formula for PENP to avoid unfair outcomes if an employee’s pay period is defined in months but their contractual notice period is expressed in weeks. The changes will apply to those individuals who have their employment terminated and where the termination payment is received on or after 6 April 2021.

April 2021 – IR35 changes in the private

This was meant to happen in April 2020, but was delayed by a year.

The upcoming IR35 changes mean that:

• medium-sized and large businesses will be responsible for working out the contractor’s employment status, not the contractor
• contractors should be given the reasons behind the decision, and can dispute the decision if they disagree with it
• small businesses are exempt from the changes – so if the contractor works for a small client, the contractor will still be responsible for working out their employment status

End clients are classed as small businesses if they meet two of the following criteria:

• annual turnover of no more than £10.2 million
• balance sheet total of no more than £5.1 million
• no more than 50 employees

Businesses and contractors should start preparing for the 2021 IR35 changes as soon as possible.

30 April 2021

Interim provision in the EU-UK trade and co-operation agreement for transmission of personal data to the UK ends