Employer and potential misuse of furlough payments

legofan

A friend of my mother works in a care home. She is over 70 and has had a letter stating that she is a vulnerable adult. She has stopped working as a result.
She was talking to mum today and said that she wasn't going to get paid although she won't find out until the end of the month. However, she said her employer was going to claim furlough money to cover 80% of her wages but they would use this money to set on a new member of staff to do her job as she cannot work. They have also said they don't know if her job will be there when she deemed safe to return to work. 
I'm pretty sure this is a complete misuse of the scheme and potentially fraudulent behaviour by her employer.  I'm assuming there must be some form of check in place to prevent this kind of thing happening. 

gary83

yes that’s fraud. You’d like to think something had got lost in translation or there’d been a miscommunication. However, Her age alone doesn’t make her eligible for furlough. If her company agreed she’d been furloughed that would have to be confirmed in writing.

any claims relate to an individual employee, the employer has to pass that money on to the employee they claimed it for. HMRC will eventually be auditing the claims.

sharpe106

It is fraudulent if they are doing. There will be checks, but they will not find ever bit of fraud. They fully expect people to make fraudulent claims. If they do this they are setting up a way to report employers that are still making staff work etc so she could report them that way.  

gary83

I’m addition to it being fraud it would also adversely affect her in that the employer would need to declare the payments to her so it would impact her entitlement to means tested benefit, Universal Credit & the like.