£ 1000 employer compensation

Jaco70

Apologies if I'm posting this in the wrong place. I didn't fully understand the chancellors speech yesterday, regarding the £ 1,000 compensation for keeping people employed.
My situation is that I furloughed eight people, from my small limited company, from 25th March for between 4.5 weeks and 8 weeks. One of those people has since left, although they did start back after furlough for a couple of weeks, another is a director (myself) and a third is my wife who only draws £ 100 pw wages. The other five are all back working normally.
Will I be entitled to any compensation? My wife thinks I will be. To be clear, I think the furlough scheme has been a life saver and I didn't abuse it at all, and I don't need (or deserve) any further compensation, but if its offered I'm taking it.

silvercar

Eligible for everyone who (a) you furloughed for at least 3 weeks (b) are still employed 31 January 2021 (c) average earnings of £520 Nov/ Dec/ Jan.
It may be worth giving your wife a pay rise from November!

Jeremy535897

All we know is here:

"Policy decision

Job Retention Bonus – The government will introduce a one-off payment of £1,000 to UK employers for every furloughed employee who remains continuously employed through to the end of January 2021. Employees must earn above the Lower Earnings Limit (£520 per month) on average between the end of the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme and the end of January 2021. Payments will be made from February 2021. Further detail about the scheme will be announced by the end of July."

From https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/a-plan-for-jobs-documents/a-plan-for-jobs-2020

The one who left won't qualify. Your wife won't qualify, unless the detail to be published says you are allowed to increase her wage to bring up her average. You don't say what your wage is. If the others stay with you and are paid above £520 a month, they should qualify.

Jaco70

silvercar said:

Eligible for everyone who (a) you furloughed for at least 3 weeks (b) are still employed 31 January 2021 (c) average earnings of £520 Nov/ Dec/ Jan.
It may be worth giving your wife a pay rise from November!

Thanks for that. That sounds incredibly promising. To be honest I can't believe how generous it is, and it feels a bit unnecessary. Also, yes I should increase my wife's pay to £ 130 pw (she only works about half day per week btw, its not that I'm not a slave driver). I wonder if it covers directors, I shouldn't think so, but still great.
Thank you.

Jaco70

Jeremy535897 said:

All we know is here:

"Policy decision

Job Retention Bonus – The government will introduce a one-off payment of £1,000 to UK employers for every furloughed employee who remains continuously employed through to the end of January 2021. Employees must earn above the Lower Earnings Limit (£520 per month) on average between the end of the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme and the end of January 2021. Payments will be made from February 2021. Further detail about the scheme will be announced by the end of July."

From https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/a-plan-for-jobs-documents/a-plan-for-jobs-2020

The one who left won't qualify. Your wife won't qualify, unless the detail to be published says you are allowed to increase her wage to bring up her average. You don't say what your wage is. If the others stay with you and are paid above £520 a month, they should qualify.

My wage is £ 300pw (£ 240 for the 4 weeks I furloughed myself). The others are paid between £ 400 and £ 550 pw. It sounds like a very nice post xmas bonus. Thank you

Daveinlincoln

So leading on from what the replies state here....am I also eligible? (hope you don't mind me jumping on your thread Jaco70)
I'm a limited company director, its just me in the company and I pay myself £700 a month, i'm getting £560 a month furlough pay at the moment.

Could I also get the £1000 in January?

jimkelly

Daveinlincoln said:

So leading on from what the replies state here....am I also eligible? (hope you don't mind me jumping on your thread Jaco70)
I'm a limited company director, its just me in the company and I pay myself £700 a month, i'm getting £560 a month furlough pay at the moment.

Could I also get the £1000 in January?

Yes as long as you are still paying yourself more then £520 per month between Nov - Jan.

Going back to the OP, as he seems to under the impression that he'll "only" get £1000.  If the 8 people furloughed are all still on the payroll for the 3 months up to the end of January (and they are all being paid a minimum of £520 per month for those 3 months), then the company will received 8 x £1000.

Whether they are a director or their wages are subsequently increased* (i.e. as your wife could be) is irrelevant.

* - unless the wording yet to be released restricts this in some way.

Jaco70

jimkelly said:

Daveinlincoln said:

So leading on from what the replies state here....am I also eligible? (hope you don't mind me jumping on your thread Jaco70)
I'm a limited company director, its just me in the company and I pay myself £700 a month, i'm getting £560 a month furlough pay at the moment.

Could I also get the £1000 in January?

Yes as long as you are still paying yourself more then £520 per month between Nov - Jan.

Going back to the OP, as he seems to under the impression that he'll "only" get £1000.  If the 8 people furloughed are all still on the payroll for the 3 months up to the end of January (and they are all being paid a minimum of £520 per month for those 3 months), then the company will received 8 x £1000.

Whether they are a director or their wages are subsequently increased* (i.e. as your wife could be) is irrelevant.

* - unless the wording yet to be released restricts this in some way.

Yeah that's great. Potentially £ 7,000 as one employee left subsequently, but still a huge bonus for a small business. 

macman

However,  to keep staff on after the end of furlough will cost a minimum of £1,560 (3 months at min £520pm). The gain in January is £1K, so no-one is going to be retained after October just in order to collect the bonus: they'd have to be doing work that adds profit to the business,

sliphi

Jaco70 said:

jimkelly said:

Daveinlincoln said:

So leading on from what the replies state here....am I also eligible? (hope you don't mind me jumping on your thread Jaco70)
I'm a limited company director, its just me in the company and I pay myself £700 a month, i'm getting £560 a month furlough pay at the moment.

Could I also get the £1000 in January?

Yes as long as you are still paying yourself more then £520 per month between Nov - Jan.

Going back to the OP, as he seems to under the impression that he'll "only" get £1000.  If the 8 people furloughed are all still on the payroll for the 3 months up to the end of January (and they are all being paid a minimum of £520 per month for those 3 months), then the company will received 8 x £1000.

Whether they are a director or their wages are subsequently increased* (i.e. as your wife could be) is irrelevant.

* - unless the wording yet to be released restricts this in some way.

Yeah that's great. Potentially £ 7,000 as one employee left subsequently, but still a huge bonus for a small business. 

Yes, a little bonus for you come February, equivilent to a couple of weeks payroll bill, assuming you:
a) manage to generate the £85,000 between now and then to pay all your staff (plus whatever else you need to actually run your buisiness)
b) you increase your wife's pay by 30% (probably best not to let the other staff know of her pay rise for doing teh same job, else they will probably want to know where their's is, meaning your wage cost will increase to over £200k per year!)
c) All your current staff elect to remain with you (less the one who already left you once)
d) You don't have to let anyone go (less the one who already left you once, but if you now are forced to let that person go having only recently re-employed them, the morale of the other employees (less possibly your wife) will probably drop to rock bottom.

If you don't achieve all that, then the value of the bonus will be less.

* and assuming no devil is hidden in the detail when it is released later this month.

It's a scheme designed to now encourage employers to retain staff and so keep them off the dole queue, where presumably most would already be as they were generating no income for you at all very recently for 1-2 months.

Hope all goes well for your business that you will manage to get the bonus.

neilmcl

Daveinlincoln said:

So leading on from what the replies state here....am I also eligible? (hope you don't mind me jumping on your thread Jaco70)
I'm a limited company director, its just me in the company and I pay myself £700 a month, i'm getting £560 a month furlough pay at the moment.

Could I also get the £1000 in January?

Although the detail is yet to be published fully I'd doubt that it would apply to sole operated ltd companies and personally I don't think it should. It's an attempt to limit the amount of redundancies and you;re hardly in that position as a ltd co. director.