| The Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS) is due to end on 30th June, and employers will no longer be able to claim any pay for furloughed staff beyond that point (unless there is a further extension). It is likely to be important to many of you, therefore, to be able to make some staff redundant at that point.
The redundancy procedure is actually not too complex, but it does require some careful planning, and you should start that well ahead of any notices being served. If you would like the termination date for staff to coincide with 30th June, you need to work back from that date – how much notice are they entitled to? If one month, you will need to serve notice on 30th May if you want to be able to claim under the CJRS for their notice pay. You will need to plan in at least two weeks’ consultation with staff before that date and thing about the logistics of that (i.e. consultation by phone or video conference is likely to be best).
Before starting consultation you will need to have put together a business case for the redundancies, identified the relevant pools of employees from whom selection for redundancy will be made, and considered what selection criteria to use – that all takes time. So now is the time to start planning.
It seems clear from the guidance that an employee participating in redundancy consultation or acting as a representative for collective consultation purposes, will not be deeded to be working in breach of the furlough rules, so it will be fine to consult during the furlough period.
We will be able to support you with all of this, but please bear in mind that we are likely to become very busy again as we head into this next phase, so our offer of free support has now been withdrawn.
A good starting point would be to read our guide and Q&As on redundancy which you will find here. |
