Can employees who are shielding be placed on Flexible Furlough?

Our advice to you here is simple. It will depend on the circumstances surrounding your debt but for the most part, unless it is crystal clear that there has been a debt outstanding long before Covid-19 and there was an inability to pay prior to the Covid situation we would recommend that you hold off issuing any further petitions until after the 31st December. Unless the criteria set out above is met, a judge is likely to exercise their discretion leniently and could dismiss the petition. This could also lead to cost consequences which would adversely affect you.

We are happy to discuss individual cases to assist creditors at this difficult time, however, generally any cases proceeding to petition would be the exception as opposed to the rule. Even if presenting a winding up petition is not available for now, there may still be other forms of legal proceedings that you can use to collect money owed to you, like county court proceedings.

Employees continue to accrue leave during furlough (whether they are on full furlough or flexible furlough) and can take leave during periods of Flexible Furlough (so long as you top the grant up to full pay for any days taken as holiday).

Government guidance has been updated to state that “Employees should not be placed on furlough for a period simply because they are on holiday for that period.” If a period of furlough happens to coincide with an employee’s holiday then you should ensure that there are business grounds to support furlough being used in that instance so that it isn’t just being used as a means to fund holiday utilisation.

A break or pause in learning can be initiated where the interruption to learning due to Covid-19 is greater than four weeks. This must be reported as a formal break in learning. In such circumstance the funding to the training provider will be suspended for the duration of the break. Previously, the rules only allowed an apprentice to initiate this break in learning but this has been expanded to give employers and training providers the right to initiate this. Training providers should continue with their monthly IRL submissions to the ESFA. During breaks in apprenticeships it is not necessary for the apprentice to comply with the minimum of 20% on the job training requirement but this will resume when the break ends.

Again, the primary point must be that an open dialogue is held with that individual to understand their concerns and to properly consider the impact that not wearing PPE will have on their abilities to undertake their duties. Consideration must be given as to whether there are any parts of their duties that they can undertake and whether they can remain in their role. Engage with the individual to ensure that you understand their point of view. What other duties can they do if they cannot do fulfil all the duties of their role?

a. You should first try and discuss this with your ex-partner, either directly or through a Solicitor, to see whether an amicable agreement can be reached.

If you contribute to private school fees voluntarily, it is a matter for you and your ex-partner to resolve the issue with the school, depending whose name is on the bills. You may need to speak to the children’s school to see whether they can offer any reductions or remedies in relation to those payments. If you contribute to the school fees as part of a Court Order, you will need to ensure you do not breach the Order and you may need to consider applying for a variation of the Order if you can no longer afford the payments or reach a compromise agreement with your ex-partner.

You can use the Child Maintenance Service (CMS) calculator (https://www.gov.uk/calculate-child-maintenance) to recalculate your child maintenance obligations using your amended income. This recalculation can then be used in your discussions and you can formally instruct the CMS to verify that calculation if you and your ex-partner cannot reach an agreement about it. If you have already formally involved the CMS, they do carry out an annual review of child maintenance payments, however, they will also recalculate payments outside of the review period where there has been a change in income of 25% or more. We expect the CMS will be experiencing a high volume of enquiries at the present time so anticipate there may be delays in them assisting.

The position on child maintenance payments included in a Court Order are slightly more complicated and how you approach this will depend on how much time has passed since the date of the Order.