Rishi, is everything alright at home?

 

I’m beginning to get a sinking feeling that Rishi Sunak has it in for me.

Well not just for me, for all of us!

He started his lockdown updates back in March/April (let’s just agree it was sometime in Spring because it’s all a blur!), regularly loving the 5pm announcement time which led to lots of evenings of me frantically reading and typing to get the update out in English as soon as possible.

Then he started switching the announcement to 5pm on a Friday.  I mean, Rishi, come on!  I know the pub was closed but at least do it on a Monday or a Tuesday.   Why a Friday?  Why 5pm on a Friday?!

More recently, he seems to been a little more generous with his timings but then he’s obviously getting grief at home again (a wild assumption I know!) and is back to taking it out on us all.

The replacement to the furlough scheme (the Job Support Scheme) was announced in late September – but with no further update as to how it would apply from 1^st November.  Then a week ago, he did do an announcement, improving the JSS scheme.  Then on Saturday he said he was postponing JSS until December and bringing back furlough for a month.  And today he’s decided we’re back to furlough until March 2021.  But he’ll review it again sometime in January.

That’s just furlough/JSS – the above can be repeated for the Self-Employed grant too!

Are we all keeping up?  Enjoy it while it lasts, it could be all different by Friday.  Most probably 5pm Friday.

The serious stuff

 

• Employees
  • The furlough scheme has been extended to the end of March 2021.
  • The scheme will pay 80% of an employees wages up to £2,500 a month
  • When furlough was extended to initially cover November, employers would still be responsible for paying the employer’s national insurance and employer’s pension contributions and we would expect this to apply for this extended furlough scheme
  • The revised scheme allows employers the flexibility to use staff for any amount of time or shift pattern, including furloughing them full-time
  • An employee needs to have been included on a PAYE Real Time Information (RTI) submission to HMRC between 20/3/20 and 30/10/20
  • Neither the employee nor the employer needs to have previously claimed or have been claimed under CJRS to lodge a claim under the extended CJRS
  • The scheme will be reviewed in January 2021

•  Self-Employed
  • The Government will pay 80% of average profits up to a maximum of £7,500 for the period November to January (this was formerly 80% for November, 40% for December and 40% for January)
  • It is expected that the online claim for the grant will be open from December – we will provide further details when they are released

• Cash grants
  • Cash grants of up to £3k per month are available for businesses forced to close
  • The grants will be administered by local authorities

• Loan schemes
  • Existing Government-backed loan schemes (such as the Bounceback loans and CBILs scheme) are extended to the end of January
  • For those businesses that have already taken a bounce-back loan, but not the full amount of a maximum of £50k or 25% of turnover, these loans can be topped up

And seriously, the amendments to these schemes should be received as a relief for all businesses & employees and provide at least some certainty that jobs can be retained for the near future.  A poor start but we got there in the end!

A less than serious footnote

 

I filled out the Government “Retrain Quiz” in October to see what delights it chucked out. The suggestion – referee! I laughed at the time.  I’m genuinely considering buying the whistle and giving it a go if he carries on!