Still waiting for first block of furlough funds

Jeremy535897

There is a bit of leeway in certain circumstances:

"When to send your FPS

Send the FPS on or before your employees’ payday, even if you pay HMRC quarterly instead of monthly.

You must enter the usual date that you pay your employees, even if you pay them earlier or later. For example, if you pay your employees early because your usual payday falls on a Bank Holiday, you should still enter your regular payday."

That's not to say that you can just sit on wages and not pay them over. As noted earlier, that can have adverse consequences for universal credit, for example. Failure to pay wages on the due date can be an unlawful deduction from wages. See https://worksmart.org.uk/work-rights/pay-and-contracts/pay/our-employer-has-not-paid-us-any-money-week-what-can-we-do

There may still be employers who think they have to say they have paid wages before claiming CJRS. That is not necessary. There will probably be a very small number of cases where employers put wages through payroll to claim CJRS when they have no intention of paying the amount claimed to the employees. That is fraud.